Thoughts for the Day

Today in History (June 13th):

323 B.C.: Alexander the Great died of fever in Babylon at age 33.

1786: Birthdays: U.S. Army Gen. Winfield Scott.

1865: Birthdays: Irish poet and dramatist William Butler Yeats.

1892: Birthdays: British actor Basil Rathbone.

1893: Birthdays: British author Dorothy L. Sayers.

1897: Birthdays: Finnish runner Paavo Nurmi, winner of nine Olympic gold medals.

1898: The Yukon Territory was formed.

1899: Birthdays: Mexican composer Carlos Chavez.

1903: Birthdays: Football Hall of Fame member Harold Red Grange.

1913: Birthdays: Radio-TV host Ralph Edwards.

1915: Birthdays: Tennis Hall of Fame member Don Budge.

1926: Birthdays: Comic actor Paul Lynde.

1928: Birthdays: Nobel economics laureate John Forbes Nash, subject of the book and movie A Beautiful Mind.

1935: Birthdays: Bulgarian-born artist Christo (born Christo Vladimirov Javacheff).

1943: Birthdays: Actor Malcolm McDowell.

1944: The first German V-1 buzz bomb hit London. Birthdays: U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

1951: Birthdays: Actor Stellan Skarsgard; Actor Richard Thomas.

1953: Birthdays: Comedian Tim Allen.

1962: Birthdays: Actor Ally Sheedy.

1966: In Miranda vs. Arizona, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that police must inform all arrested people their constitutional rights before questioning them.

1967: Thurgood Marshall became the first African-American on the U.S. Supreme Court. U.S. President Lyndon Johnson chose him to succeed Tom Clark.

1976: Arizona Republic investigative reporter Don Bolles died as a result of injuries suffered when a bomb blew up his car 11 days earlier. He had been working on an organized crime story at the time of his death.

1977: James Earl Ray, convicted assassin of Martin Luther King Jr., was captured in a Tennessee wilderness area after escaping from prison.

1983: The robot spacecraft Pioneer 10 became the first man-made object to leave the solar system. It did so 11 years after it was launched.

1986: Birthdays: Actor twins Ashley and Mary-Kate Olsen.

1993: Canada got its first woman prime minister when the ruling Progressive Conservative Party elected Kim Campbell to head the party and thus the country.

1994: The ex-wife of former football star O.J. Simpson and a friend were found stabbed to death outside her condominium in the Brentwood section of Los Angeles.

1996: Members of the Freemen militia surrendered, 10 days after the FBI cut off electricity to their Montana compound. The standoff lasted 81 days.

1997: Jurors unanimously recommended convicted Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh be sentenced to death.

2005: Pop superstar Michael Jackson was acquitted by a California jury on 10 counts of child molestation.

2006: U.S. President George W. Bush made a surprise visit to Baghdad to show support for the new Iraqi Cabinet. He said U.S. military forces wouldn’t leave until the Iraqi government could stand on its own.

2009: Incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was declared the winner in a disputed Iranian presidential election, touching off widespread clashes between protesters and police.

2010: The U.S. government announced the discovery of more than $1 trillion in untapped gold, iron, copper and lithium deposits in the mountains of Afghanistan.

2011: The complete Pentagon Papers, a secret history of the Vietnam War, were made public 40 years after the first leaks were published. The excerpts leaked by Daniel Ellsberg led to a battle with the Nixon administration and a landmark ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court expanding freedom of the press.

2012: Israeli President Shimon Peres said U.S. President Barack Obama was a great friend of Israel.


Quotes

“The big thieves hang the little ones.” – Czech proverb

“It is as natural to die as to be born; and to a little infant, perhaps, the one is as painful as the other.” – Francis Bacon

“The vine that has grown old on an old tree falls with the ruin of that tree and through that bad companionship must perish with it.” – Leonardo da Vinci, painter, engineer, musician, and scientist (1452-1519)

“Happiness is not a goal; it is a by-product.” – Eleanor Roosevelt, diplomat and author (1884-1962)


Tim Allen (1953) Comedian:

“Men look at women the way men look at cars. Everyone looks at Ferraris. Now and then we like a pickup truck, and we all buy station wagons.”

“A guy knows he’s in love when he loses interest in his car for a couple of days.”


Fanny Burney (1752-1840) English writer:
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“But if the young are never tired of erring in conduct, neither are the older in erring of judgment.”

“For my part, I confess I seldom listen to the players: one has so much to do, in looking about and finding out one’s acquaintance, that, really, one has no time to mind the stage. One merely comes to meet one’s friends, and show that one’s alive.”

“I am ashamed of confessing that I have nothing to confess.”

“I cannot sleep – great joy is as restless as great sorrow.”

“In the bosom of her respectable family resided Camilla.”

“To despise riches, may, indeed, be philosophic, but to dispense them worthily, must surely be more beneficial to mankind.”

“Traveling is the ruin of all happiness! There’s no looking at a building after seeing Italy.”


repartee

PRONUNCIATION: (rep-uhr-TEE)

MEANING: (noun)
1. A quick, witty reply or conversation.
2. Cleverness in making witty conversation.

ETYMOLOGY: From repartie (retort), from repartir (to retort), from re- + partir (to part or divide), from Latin partire (to divide), from pars (part).

USAGE: “The repartee between the four co-hosts of the morning program was a delicate affair and was utterly lost when one of them left to host another show.”


sempiternal

PRONUNCIATION: (sem-pi-TUHR-nuhl)
http://wordsmith.org/words/sempiternal.mp3

MEANING: (adjective), Everlasting.

ETYMOLOGY: From Latin semper (always) + aeternus (eternal). Earliest documented use: before 1475.

USAGE: “The US Postal Service might embrace sempiternal status, too, in the form of a stamp that would enable the bearer to infinitely freeze the price of first-class postage with a ‘forever’ stamp.” – Kathy Stevens; Post Office Hopes ‘Forever’ Stamp Will Deliver; The York Dispatch (Pennsylvania); Feb 27, 2007.

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


betide

PRONUNCIATION: (bi-TYD)
http://wordsmith.org/words/betide.mp3

MEANING: (verb tr., intr.), To happen.

ETYMOLOGY: From Old English tidan (happen), from tid (time). Often used in the phrase “woe betide”. Earliest documented use: 1297.

USAGE: “Whatever betided at the end of Mitt Romney’s term and whatever betides in the future, that shouldn’t be forgotten.” – David A. Mittell Jr.; As the Good Times Roll; Providence Journal (Rhode Island); May 17, 2007.

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


exculpate

PRONUNCIATION: (EK-skuhl-payt, ek-SKUHL-)
http://wordsmith.org/words/exculpate.mp3

MEANING: (verb tr.), To clear of guilt or blame.

ETYMOLOGY: From Latin ex- (from) + culpa (blame). Earliest documented use: 1656.

USAGE: “It did not exculpate a killer from responsibility, but it did save themfrom the gallows.” – A Provocation to Change; The Age (Melbourne, Australia); Sep 24, 2003.

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


aeolian or eolian

PRONUNCIATION: (ee-O-lee-uhn)
http://wordsmith.org/words/aeolian.mp3

MEANING: (adjective), Relating to or caused by the wind.

ETYMOLOGY: After Aeolus, god of the winds in Greek mythology. As keeper of the winds, he gave a bag containing winds to help with Odysseus’s sailing.

USAGE: “It would not be surprising if a few features — even very large ones — were sculpted by aeolian processes into the pyramidal forms we see.” – Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan; The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark; Random House; 1995.

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


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