Thoughts for the Day

Today in History (December 7th):

Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day

1598: Birthdays: Italian sculptor Gian Lorenzo Bernini.

1732: The Royal Opera House opened at Covent Garden, London.

1787: Delaware became the first state to ratify the U.S. Constitution.

1810: Birthdays: Theodor Schwann, German physiologist and co-originator of cell theory.

1863: Birthdays: Department store chain founder Richard Sears.

1873: Birthdays: Novelist Willa Cather.

1879: Birthdays: Composer Rudolf Friml (Indian Love Call).

1909: Leo Baekeland patented the process for making Bakelite, giving birth to the modern plastics industry.

1915: Birthdays: Actor Eli Wallach.

1923: Birthdays: Actor Ted Knight.

1925: Five-time Olympic gold medalist and future movie Tarzan Johnny Weissmuller set a world record in 150-yard free-style swimming.

1928: Birthdays: Linguist Noam Chomsky.

1931: U.S. President Herbert Hoover refused to see a group of hunger marchers at the White House.

1932: Birthdays: Actor Ellen Burstyn.

1941: Japan launched a sneak attack on Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, catapulting the United States into World War II. The Japanese attack left a 2,403 dead, destroyed 188 planes and a crippled U.S. Pacific Fleet. U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt described it as a date that will live in infamy.

1942: Birthdays: Rock/folksinger Harry Chapin.

1947: Birthdays: Baseball Hall of Fame member Johnny Bench.

1949: Birthdays: Singer/songwriter Tom Waits.

1956: Birthdays: Basketball Hall of Fame member Larry Bird.

1966: Birthdays: Actor C. Thomas Howell.

1972: Apollo 17 was launched from Cape Canaveral, Fla., on the last scheduled manned mission to the moon.

1983: The first execution by lethal injection took place at the state penitentiary in Huntsville, Texas.

1987: Mikhail Gorbachev arrived in Washington, the first Soviet leader to officially visit the United States since 1973.

1988: As many as 60,000 people were killed when a powerful earthquake rocked Armenia.

1991: On the 50th anniversary of Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor, U.S. President George H.W. Bush called for an end to recriminations and sought the healing of old wounds.

1992: The destruction of a 16th-century mosque by militant Hindus touched off five days of violence across India that left more than 1,100 people dead.

1993: U.S. Energy Secretary Hazel O’Leary revealed the United States had conducted 204 underground nuclear tests from 1963-90 without informing the public. Astronauts aboard the space shuttle Endeavor repaired the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope.

1995: A two-week strike by hundreds of thousands of French public-sector workers protesting planned cuts in welfare spending spread to cities throughout France.
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2001: The U.S. Labor Department announced the loss of nearly 1 million jobs over the previous three months.

2002: Azra Akin, a 21-year-old model from Turkey, won the Miss World competition, two weeks after Muslim-Christian violence in Nigeria forced organizers to move the pageant to London. More than 200 people were killed in the riots.

2003: During a visit to the United States, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said we will never tolerate Taiwan splitting away from China.

2004: Hamid Karzai was sworn in as Afghanistan’s first popularly elected president.

2007: The South Korean coast guard struggled to contain the largest oil spill in Korea following a collision between a barge and an oil tanker that spilled 10,000 tons of oil into coastal waters.

2009: Thousands of Iranian students rallied at universities in Tehran and other cities, shouting anti-government slogans and facing off against security forces.

2011: Jerry Sandusky, former Penn State assistant football coach accused of being a serial child molester, was returned to jail after two more alleged victims testified before a grand jury.



Quotes

“The law must be stable but it must not stand still.” – Roscoe Pound

“War is terrorism, magnified a hundred times.” – Howard Zinn, historian, professor, author, playwright, and social activist (1922-2010)



Noam Chomsky (1928- ) US educator and linguist:

“All over the place, from the popular culture to the propaganda system, there is constant pressure to make people feel that they are helpless, that the only role they can have is to ratify decisions and to consume.”

“American society is now remarkably atomized. Political organizations have collapsed. In fact, it seems like even bowling leagues are collapsing. The left has a lot to answer for here. There’s been a drift toward very fragmenting tendencies among left groups, toward this sort of identity politics.”

“Any dictator would admire the uniformity and obedience of the U.S. media.”

“As soon as questions of will or decision or reason or choice of action arise, human science is at a loss.”

“Censorship is never over for those who have experienced it. It is a brand on the imagination that affects the individual who has suffered it, forever.”

“Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.”

“Education must provide the opportunities for self-fulfillment; it can at best provide a rich and challenging environment for the individual to explore, in his own way.”

“Either you repeat the same conventional doctrines everybody is saying, or else you say something true, and it will sound like it’s from Neptune.”

“I have often thought that if a rational Fascist dictatorship were to exist, then it would choose the American system.”



muslin

PRONUNCIATION:  (MUHZ-lin)
http://wordsmith.org/words/muslin.mp3

MEANING:  noun: A plain-woven cotton fabric made in various degrees of fineness.

ETYMOLOGY:  From French mousseline, from Italian mussolina, from Mussolo (Mosul, Iraq)which was known for this fabric. Earliest documented use: 1609.

NOTES:  Earlier sheer muslin was used for women’s dresses and as a result, the word muslin was used collectively for women. Today muslin is mostly used for curtains, sheets, table cloths, etc.

USAGE:  “What goes on in Brussels is glimpsed through a veil of muslin. Late night wheeler-dealing is not always recorded.” – Stephen Glover; Let’s Send More Reporters to Brussels; The Independent(London, UK); Nov 2, 2009.

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


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