Thoughts for the Day

Today in History (January 16th):

1581: The English Parliament outlawed Roman Catholicism.

1777: Vermont declared independence from New York.

1838: Birthdays: German philosopher Franz Brentano.

1853: Birthdays: Andre Michelin, the French industrialist who first mass-produced rubber automobile tires.

1874: Birthdays: Canadian poet Robert Service.

1883: The U.S. Congress passed a bill creating the civil service.

1901: Birthdays: Former Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista; Inventor Frank Zamboni.

1908: Birthdays: Singer Ethel Merman.

1910: Birthdays: Baseball Hall of Fame member Jay Dizzy Dean.

1919: The United States went legally dry as prohibition of alcoholic beverages took effect under the 18th Amendment to the Constitution. The amendment was repealed in 1933.

1925: Leon Trotsky was dismissed as chairman of the Russian Revolution Military Council.

1932: Birthdays: Zoologist Dian Fossey.

1933: Birthdays: Writer Susan Sontag.

1934: Birthdays: Opera singer Marilyn Horne.

1935: Birthdays: Race car driver A.J. Foyt.

1942: Screen star Carole Lombard, her mother and 20 other people were killed in a plane crash near Las Vegas. Lombard was the wife of actor Clark Gable.

1943: Birthdays: Country singer Ronnie Milsap.

1944: U.S. Army Gen. Dwight Eisenhower arrived in London to assume command of the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Forces in Europe.

1947: Birthdays: Radio talk show host Laura Schlessinger.

1948: Birthdays: Film director John Carpenter.

1950: Birthdays: Choreographer, actor and director Debbie Allen.

1959: Birthdays: Nigerian singer Sade Adu.

1970: Buckminster Fuller received a gold medal from the American Institute of Architects.

1974: Birthdays: British model Kate Moss.

1980: Birthdays: Baseball star Albert Pujols.

1984: U.S. President Ronald Reagan called for peaceful competition with Moscow. He authorized research and development on space-age weapons capable of destroying incoming nuclear missiles, the program known as Star Wars.

1986: Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi said Libya would train, arm and protect Arab guerrillas for Palestinian suicide and terrorist missions, his first explicit endorsement of terrorism.

1991: The Persian Gulf War began with the allied bombing of Baghdad.

1997: A bomb exploded at an Atlanta building housing an abortion clinic. An hour later, after investigators and others had come to the scene, a second bomb went off, injuring six people.

2001: President Laurent Kabila of the Democratic Republic of the Congo was shot to death, reportedly by one of his bodyguards, who was killed by other bodyguards.

2005: U.S. President George W. Bush said his re-election was a ratification of what he did in Iraq and there was no reason to hold any administration official accountable.

2006: Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf was sworn in as Liberia’s president. She was the first female elected head of state in Africa. International Atomic Energy Agency officials said Iran’s newly restarted nuclear program could enable the country to have nuclear weapons within three years. A suicide attack at a Kandahar, Afghanistan, wrestling match killed 22 civilians.

2007: A U.N. report said about 34,000 Iraqis died violent deaths due to fighting and terrorist attacks in Iraq during 2006.

2008: Officials in Islamabad put the death toll at 47 in the attack on a northwestern Pakistani military outpost by about 200 Taliban militants. Republican Bobby Jindal took over as the governor of Louisiana. He was the first Indian-American elected to that office in the United States. At 36, he also was the nation’s youngest governor. A report said the United States’ roads, bridges, dams and sewer systems were in such major disrepair that fixing infrastructure could cost $1.6 trillion.

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2010: After three days of delays caused by what international relief groups called tremendous logistical challenges disaster aid made its way to victims in earthquake-ravaged Haiti.

2011: Tunisian army helicopter gunships battled gunmen loyal to the country’s ousted president on the streets of Tunis, at the Presidential Palace, Central Bank and Interior Ministry. The death toll from floods and mudslides in Brazil reached 641 with heavy rains hampered efforts.

2012: The new year brought Americans the highest January gas prices ever, a national average of $3.39 a gallon of unleaded gasoline, nearly 30 cents higher than a year earlier, the motorist group AAA announced. The peak was $4.114 in July 2008.



Quotes

“Life is a tragedy when seen in close-up, but a comedy in long-shot.” – Charlie Chaplin, actor, director, and composer (1889-1977)

“The distance between insanity and genius is measured only by success.” – James Bond (Tomorrow Never Dies)

“When a husband brings his wife flowers for no reason, there’s a reason.” – Molly McGee

“No legacy is so rich as honesty. – William Shakespeare, 1564-1616



Susan Sontag (1933-2004) US writer and critic:

“A family’s photograph album is generally about the extended family and, often, is all that remains of it.”

“A fiction about soft or easy deaths is part of the mythology of most diseases that are not considered shameful or demeaning.”

“A large part of the popularity and persuasiveness of psychology comes from its being a sublimated spiritualism: a secular, ostensibly scientific way of affirming the primacy of “spirit” over matter.”

“AIDS obliges people to think of sex as having, possibly, the direst consequences: suicide. Or murder.”

“AIDS occupies such a large part in our awareness because of what it has been taken to represent. It seems the very model of all the catastrophes privileged populations feel await them.”

“Although none of the rules for becoming more alive is valid, it is healthy to keep on formulating them.”

“Ambition, if it feeds at all, does so on the ambition of others.”

“Any critic is entitled to wrong judgments, of course. But certain lapses of judgment indicate the radical failure of an entire sensibility.”

“Any important disease whose causality is murky, and for which treatment is ineffectual, tends to be awash in significance.”

“‘Camp’ is a vision of the world in terms of style – but a particular style. It is the love of the exaggerated.”



salivate

PRONUNCIATION: (SAL-uh-vayt)

MEANING: (verb intr.)
1. To show great relish in anticipation of something desirable.
2. To produce saliva.

ETYMOLOGY: From Latin salivare (to salivate). Earliest documented use: 1669.

USAGE: “The capitalists gathered in Tianjin salivate at the prospect of pushing beyond China’s richer coastal provinces and into the hinterland, where hundreds of millions of new consumers would love to buy a fridge and fancy food to put in it.” – The Summer Davos Blues; The Economist (London, UK); Sep 15, 2012.

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



stochastic

PRONUNCIATION: (stuh-KAS-tik)
http://wordsmith.org/words/stochastic.mp3

MEANING: adjective: Involving chance; random; probabilistic.

ETYMOLOGY: From Greek stokhos (aim, target, a pointed stake for an archer to aim at).Earliest documented use: 1662.

USAGE: “Medicine is a stochastic science — no doctor can predict the future.” – Sandeep Jauhar; When Doctors Slam the Door; The New York Times; Mar 16, 2003.

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


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