Thoughts for the Day

Today in History (June 11th):

1184 B.C.: It is believed that Troy was sacked and burned.

1572: Birthdays: English playwright/poet Ben Jonson.

1776: John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Robert Livingston and Roger Sherman were appointed by Continental Congress to write a declaration of independence for the American colonies from England.

1864: Birthdays: German composer Richard Strauss.

1880: Birthdays: Montana’s Jeannette Rankin, the first woman elected to the U.S. House of Representatives.

1910: Birthdays: Undersea explorer Jacques Cousteau.

1913: Birthdays: Hall of fame football Coach Vince Lombardi.

1919: Sir Barton became the first horse to win thoroughbred racing’s Triple Crown.

1920: U.S. Sen. Warren G. Harding, R-Ohio, was chosen as the dark horse Republican presidential candidate. That November, he was elected the 29th U. S. president.

1925: Birthdays: Author William Styron.

1927: U.S. President Calvin Coolidge welcomed Charles Lindbergh home after the pilot made history’s first non-stop flight across the Atlantic Ocean, New York to Paris.

1930: Birthdays: Member of the U.S. House of Representatives Charles B. Rangel.

1933: Birthdays: Actor Gene Wilder.

1936: Birthdays: Actor Chad Everett.

1939: Birthdays: Scottish auto racer Jackie Stewart.

1945: Birthdays: Actor Adrienne Barbeau.

1949: Birthdays: Rock and Rock Hall of Fame member drummer Frank Beard (ZZ Top).

1956: Birthdays: Football Hall of Fame member Joe Montana.

1959: Birthdays: Actor Hugh Laurie.

1960: Birthdays: TV host Dr. Mahmet Oz.

1963: Facing federalized Alabama National Guard troops, Gov. George Wallace ended his blockade of the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa and allowed two African-Americans to enroll.

1967: The Six Day War between Israel and its Arab neighbors ended with a United Nations-brokered cease-fire. The outnumbered Israel forces achieved a swift and decisive victory in the brief war.

1978: Birthdays: Actor Joshua Jackson.

1985: Karen Ann Quinlan died at age 31 in a New Jersey nursing home, nearly 10 years after she lapsed into an irreversible coma. Her condition had sparked a nationwide controversy over her right to die.

1986: Birthdays: Actor Shia LaBeouf.

1987: Margaret Thatcher became the first British prime minister in 160 years to win three consecutive terms.

1990: The U.S. Supreme Court struck down an anti-flag-burning law passed by Congress the year before.

1994: After 49 years, the Russian military occupation of what had been East Germany ended with the departure of the Red Army from Berlin.

2001: Timothy McVeigh was executed in Terre Haute, Ind., for the April 19, 1995, Oklahoma City bombing that killed 168 people and injured hundreds.

2010: Flash floods swept across Arkansas campgrounds, killing at least 18 people.

2011: The leader of al-Qaida in East Africa, Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, was killed in a shootout with Somali soldiers at a checkpoint in Mogadishu.

2012: Teofilo Stevenson of Cuba, winner of three Olympic gold medals and considered one of the best amateur boxers ever, died at of a heart attack in Havana. He was 60.


Quotes

“A hungry man is not a free man.” – Adlai Stevenson, statesman (1900-1965)

“A thing of beauty is a joy forever.” – John Keats

“Beauty is truth, truth beauty … that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.” – John Keats

“By the time you can make ends meet, they move the ends.” – Anonymous

“Let us now set forth one of the fundamental truths about marriage: the wife is in charge.” – Bill Cosby

“Sow an act, and you reap a habit; sow a habit, and you reap a character; sow a character, and you reap a destiny.” – George Dana Boardman, 1801-1831

“A man should have any number of little aims about which he should be conscious and for which he should have names, but he should have neither name for, nor consciousness concerning, the main aim of his life.” – Samuel Butler, 1835-1902

“Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.” – Elie Wiesel, writer, Nobel laureate (b. 1928)


Jeannette Rankin (1880-1973) first female US Representative:
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“The individual woman is required a thousand times a day to choose either to accept her appointed role and thereby rescue her good disposition out of the wreckage of her self-respect, or else follow an independent line of behavior and rescue her self-respect out of the wreckage of her good disposition.”

“You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake.”

“You take people as far as they will go, not as far as you would like them to go.”

“As a woman, I can’t go to war, and I refuse to send anyone else.”

“There can be no compromise with war; it cannot be reformed or controlled; cannot be disciplined into decency or codified into common sense; for war is the slaughter of human beings, temporarily regarded as enemies, on as large a scale as possible.”

“It is unconscionable that 10,000 boys have died in Vietnam…. If 10,000 American women had mind enough they could end the war, if they were committed to the task, even if it meant going to jail.”

“If I had my life to live over, I would do it all again, but this time I would be nastier.”

“What one decides to do in crisis depends on one’s philosophy of life, and that philosophy cannot be changed by an incident. If one hasn’t any philosophy in crises, others make the decision.”

“Small use it will be to save democracy for the race if we cannot save the race for democracy.”


gulag

PRONUNCIATION: (GOO-lahg)

MEANING: (noun)
1. The system of forced-labor camp in the former Soviet Union.
2. Any prison or forced-labor camp, especially one for political prisoners.
3. A place of great hardship.

ETYMOLOGY: From Russian Gulag, acronym from Glavnoe Upravlenie ispravitel’no-trudovykh LAGere (Chief Administration for Corrective Labour Camps). Over time, the word “Gulag” has also come to signify not only the administration of the concentration camps but also the system of Soviet slave labor itself, in all its forms and varieties: labor camps, punishment camps, criminal and political camps, women’s camps, children’s camps, transit camps.

USAGE: “The new management’s cost-cutting efforts rapidly turned what had been a pleasant work environment into a gulag-like place of toil.”


expansive

PRONUNCIATION: (ik-SPAN-siv)
http://wordsmith.org/words/expansive.mp3

MEANING: (adjective)
1. Having a wide range; comprehensive.
2. Friendly, open, communicative.
3. Having a tendency or capacity to expand.

ETYMOLOGY: From Latin expandere (to spread out), from ex- (out) + pandere (to spread). Earliest documented use: 1651.

USAGE: “The European Dream is more expansive and systemic, and therefore more bound to the welfare of the planet.” – Jeremy Rifkin; The European Dream; Utne (Topeka, Kansas); Sep/Oct 2004.

Explore “expansive” in the Visual Thesaurus.
http://visualthesaurus.com/?w1=expansive


redound

PRONUNCIATION: (ri-DOUND)
http://wordsmith.org/words/redound.mp3

MEANING: (verb intr.)
1. To contribute to (someone’s credit, honor, etc.).
2. To come back upon.

ETYMOLOGY: From Old French redonder (to overflow), from Latin redundare (to overflow), from red-/re- (back) + undare (to surge). Ultimately from the Indo-European root wed- (water, wet), which also gave us water, winter, hydrant, redundant, otter, and vodka. Earliest documented use: before 1382.

USAGE:

“The Prime Minister stated that such an arrangement could redound to the benefit of Barbadians.” – Pipeline Link With T&T Soon?; The Barbados Advocate; Mar 11, 2012.

“MIT officials fear that the explosion in the harbor will redound badly on Tech.” – Janet Maslin; ‘The Technologists’ by Matthew Pearl; The New York Times; Feb 22, 2012.

Explore “redound” in the Visual Thesaurus.
http://visualthesaurus.com/?w1=redound


martinet

PRONUNCIATION: (mar-ti-NET, MAR-ti-net)
http://wordsmith.org/words/martinet.mp3

MEANING: (noun), A strict disciplinarian.

ETYMOLOGY: After Jean Martinet, an army officer during the reign of Louis XIV in France. He was a tough drill master known for his strict adherence to rules and discipline. He was killed by friendly fire during the siege of Duisburg in 1672.

USAGE: “Many people believe the agency acts like a martinet. They say the agency is hard-headed and hard-hearted. They say it is dictatorial and unyielding.” – APA Motives Commendable; Press-Republican (Plattsburgh, New York); May 11, 2009.


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