Today in History (January 17th):
1605: Don Quixote was published.
1706: Birthdays: American statesman, scientist and author Benjamin Franklin.
1806: The first baby was born in the White House, the grandson of U.S. President Thomas Jefferson.
1863: Birthdays: British statesman David Lloyd George.
1871: Andrew Hallikie received a patent for a cable car system that went into service in San Francisco in 1873.
1873: The First Battle of the Stronghold took place.
1880: Birthdays: Mack Sennett, director of slapstick silent films.
1893: Queen Liliuokalani of Hawaii was deposed in a bloodless revolution and a provisional government established, with annexation by the United States as its aim.
1899: Birthdays: U.S. gangster Al Capone; English novelist Nevil Shute.
1917: The United States bought 50 of the Virgin Islands in the West Indies from Denmark for $25 million.
1922: Birthdays: Actor Betty White.
1927: Birthdays: Singer Eartha Kitt.
1928: Birthdays: Beauty specialist Vidal Sassoon.
1931: Birthdays: Actor James Earl Jones.
1932: Birthdays: Actor Sheree North.
1933: Birthdays: Puppeteer Shari Lewis.
1939: Birthdays: Talk show host Maury Povich.
1940: Birthdays: Olympic gold medal-winning runner Kipchoge Keino.
1942: Birthdays: Heavyweight boxing champion Muhammad Ali.
1946: The U.N. Security Council met for the first time.
1949: Birthdays: Comedian Andy Kaufman; Former Rolling Stones member Mick Taylor.
1950: Nine bandits staged a $1.5 million robbery of a Brink’s armored car in Boston.
1955: Birthdays: Musician Steve Earle.
1957: Birthdays: Comedian Steve Harvey.
1962: Birthdays: Comic actor Jim Carrey; Writer Sebastian Junger.
1964: Birthdays: U.S. first lady Michelle Obama.
1966: A U.S. B-52 bomber carrying four hydrogen bombs collided with its refueling plane over Palomares, Spain, scattering radioactive plutonium over the area.
1971: Birthdays: Singer Kid Rock.
1977: Convicted killer Gary Gilmore was executed by firing squad in Utah, the first execution since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty the previous year.
1980: Birthdays: Actor Zooey Deschanel.
1982: Birthdays: Pro basketball star Dwyane Wade.
1987: U.S. President Ronald Reagan signed a secret order permitting the covert sale of arms to Iran.
1991: Harald V became king of Norway.
1993: U.S. missiles attacked an Iraqi nuclear weapons facility outside Baghdad in an effort to destroy Saddam Hussein’s ability to build weapons of mass destruction.
1994: A pre-dawn earthquake struck the Los Angeles area, claiming 61 lives and causing widespread damage.
1995: A powerful earthquake rocked Kobe, Japan, and the surrounding area, killing more than 5,000 people.
1996: Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman was sentenced to life in prison and 16 others were also sentenced to jail for plotting to bomb the United Nations.
1998: U.S. President Bill Clinton denied in a sworn deposition that he had an affair with former White House intern Monica Lewinsky.
2000: Almost 50,000 people marched in Columbia, S.C., to protest the flying of the Confederate battle flag over the state Capitol.
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2006: The U.S. Supreme Court upheld Oregon’s assisted suicide law by a 6-3 vote. It allowed doctors to help mentally competent terminally ill patients end their lives.
2010: The United Nations confirmed that the head of its mission to Haiti and his top deputy were killed in the Port-au-Prince earthquake. Sebastian Pinera, a 60-year-old billionaire, won Chile’s presidential election, becoming the country’s first conservative leader since Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship ended two decades previously.
2011: The United Nations reported that several suspects had been indicted in the 2005 assassination of former Lebanon Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.
2012: Rebellious Bedouin tribes formed a rising adversary for Egypt’s military-led government, already struggling to manage the transition to democracy. Tribal leaders warned they may take up arms to achieve a greater voice in the new Parliament.
Quotes
“Some tortures are physical
And some are mental,
But the one that is both
Is dental.”
– Ogden Nash, poet (1902-1971)
“What, then, is time? I know well enough what it is, provided that nobody asks me; but if I am asked what it is and try to explain, I am baffled.” – St. Augustine
“There are two kinds of light — the glow that illuminates, and the glare that obscures.” – James Thurber, writer and cartoonist (1894-1961)
melancholy
PRONUNCIATION: (MEL-uhn-kol-ee)
MEANING:
(noun), A pensive, gloomy, depressed state.
(adjective), Having or causing a sad mood.
ETYMOLOGY: From the former belief that a gloomy state was the result of the excess of black bile. From Latin melancholia, from Greek melancholia (the condition of having an excess of black bile), from melan- (black) + chole (bile), ultimately from the Indo-European root ghel- (to shine), which is also the source of words such as yellow, gold, glimmer, gloaming, glimpse, glass, arsenic, and cholera. Earliest documented use: before 1375.
USAGE:
“Loss, estrangement, and distance–and a mood finely poised between melancholy and melodrama — are the collection’s keynotes.” – Life’s a beach: New fiction; The Economist (London, UK); Nov 30, 2002.
“His sigh and then his laugh, his melancholy and his humour, made people like him, and he knew it.” – Virginia Woolf; Together and Apart.
Explore “melancholy” in the Visual Thesaurus.
http://visualthesaurus.com/?w1=melancholy
escarpment
PRONUNCIATION: (i-SKARP-ment)
MEANING: (noun)
1. A steep slope or long cliff that results from erosion or faulting and separates two relatively level areas of differing elevations.
2. A steep slope in front of a fortification.
ETYMOLOGY: French escarpe, from Italian scarpa.
USAGE: “Before they could climb the castle wall they first had to navigate a treacherous escarpment during which time they would be frightfully exposed to archers and other ranged weaponry from the crenellated battlements.”
coquette
PRONUNCIATION: (koh-KET)
MEANING: (noun), A woman who habitually trifles with the affections of men; a flirt.
ETYMOLOGY: Coquette is the feminine form of French coquet, “flirtatious man,” diminutive of coq, “rooster, cock.” The adjective form is coquettish. The verb coquet (also coquette) means “to flirt or trifle with.”
USAGE: “Lola was an energetic woman, always singing and dancing, a coquette whose flirtatiousness infuriated my brother.”
immanent
PRONUNCIATION: (IM-uh-nuhnt)
http://wordsmith.org/words/immanent.mp3
MEANING: (adjective)
1. Inherent; spread throughout.
2. Subjective: taking place within the mind and having no effect outside of it.
ETYMOLOGY: From Latin immanere (to remain in place), from in- (in) + manere (to remain).Ultimately from the Indo-European root men- (to remain), which is also thesource of mansion, manor, remain, and permanent (but not ‘imminent’ withwhich ‘immanent’ is often confused). Earliest documented use: 1535.
USAGE: “The invisible but somehow immanent presence of Sep 11′s inferno over NewJersey serves to remind us that Updike has written about apocalypse before.” – Robert Stone; Updike’s Other America; The New York Times; Jun 18, 2006.
Explore “immanent” in the Visual Thesaurus
http://visualthesaurus.com/?w1=immanent