Today in History (March 17th):
1762: New York City staged the first parade honoring the Roman Catholic feast day of St. Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland. It was led by Irish soldiers serving in the British army.
1776: The Continental Army under Gen. George Washington forced British troops to evacuate Boston.
1777: Birthdays: The fifth Chief Justice of the United States Roger Brooke Taney.
1834: Birthdays: German engineer Gottlieb Daimler, inventor of the gasoline-burning internal combustion engine.
1846: Birthdays: Children’s author and illustrator Kate Greenaway.
1900: Birthdays: Composer Alfred Newman.
1901: 71 paintings by the late Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh were shown at the Bernheim-Jeune gallery in Paris and caused a sensation across the art world.
1902: Birthdays: Golf legend Bobby Jones.
1914: Birthdays: Football Hall of Fame member Sammy Baugh.
1919: Birthdays: Singer/pianist Nat King Cole.
1938: Birthdays: Ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev.
1941: The the National Gallery of Art was opened by Franklin D. Roosevelt. Birthdays: Rock ‘n’ roll Hall of Fame member Paul Kantner.
1945: The bloody World War II battle against Japanese forces for the Pacific island of Iwo Jima ended in victory for the United States.
1948: Birthdays: Writer William Gibson.
1949: Birthdays: Actor Patrick Duffy.
1951: Birthdays: Actor Kurt Russell.
1954: Birthdays: Actor Lesley-Anne Down.
1955: Birthdays: Actor Gary Sinise.
1958: The U.S. Navy launched the satellite Vanguard 1 into orbit around the Earth.
1960: Birthdays: Actor Vicki Lewis.
1964: Birthdays: Actor Rob Lowe.
1972: Birthdays: Soccer star Mia Hamm.
1973: Birthdays: Caroline Corr, of the Irish pop band The Corrs.
1978: The tanker Amoco Cadiz ran aground on the coast of Brittany in France, spilling 220,000 tons of crude oil.
1992: South African whites voted to end minority rule. 10 people were killed and at least 126 injured in a bomb blast that destroyed the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires.
1999: The International Olympic Committee voted to expel six members in connection with the bribery scandal related to the effort by Salt Lake City to win the 2002 Winter Olympic Games. Five other IOC members had earlier resigned.
2000: Smith and Wesson, the nation’s oldest and largest maker of handguns, agreed to a wide array of restrictions in exchange for ending some lawsuits that threatened to bankrupt the company.
2003: As war with Iraq seemed a certainty, U.S. President George W. Bush gave Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and his sons 48 hours to leave the country but the ultimatum was rejected. U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan ordered U.N. personal out of Iraq.
2004: More than 25 people were killed and 41 injured in a car-bomb blast at the Mount Lebanon Hotel in Baghdad.
2005: Several major league baseball players told the U.S. Congress that steroids were a problem in the sport.
2006: A U.S. appeals court ruled that the Environmental Protection Administration cannot exempt older power plants and refineries from the Clean Air Act, voting unanimously against the Bush administration’s interpretation of the law. General Motors said its actual losses the year before were $10 billion, some $2 billion more than previously reported.
2007: The Palestinian legislature approved the Hamas-dominated unity government though leaders of the Hamas and Fatah factions remained divided on Israeli issues.
2008: Iraqi officials reported a female suicide bomber, apparently targeting Shiite worshipers, killed at least 42 people and wounded 58 others in Karbala. The blast overshadowed a visit by U.S. Vice President Dick Chaney who spoke on an improvement in security. Three dozen bodies were found buried in a residential backyard in Juarez, Mexico, near the U.S. border, believed enemies of the Juarez drug cartel and second mass grave found in a week.
2009: U.S. President Barack Obama signed the $787 billion stimulus package into law, hoping to create 3.5 million jobs for Americans in two years. Republican lawmakers argued it contained too much pork-barrel spending and not enough tax cuts. General Motors and Chrysler asked for an additional $14 billion from the government to keep from going bankrupt. That made their total request $39 billion.
2010: In a show of bipartisanship, the U.S. Senate gave final congressional approval to a jobs bill that included incentives for small businesses to hire new employees who have been out of work for at least 60 days.
2011: The U.N. Security Council approved airstrikes to impose a no-fly zone over Libya, by a vote of 10-0 with five abstentions, including China and Russia. U.S., British and French military aircraft began bombing Libyan air and ground defenses two days later to protect Benghazi, a rebel stronghold.
2012: John Demjanjuk, former Nazi death camp guard and onetime Ohio autoworker who fought a decades-long battle against extradition and trial, died in Germany while awaiting an appeal of his conviction. Demjanjuk, 91, accused of being a feared guard called Ivan the Terrible, was found guilty in 2010 in a German court of assisting in mass murder at the Sobibor death camp in Poland during World War II and sentenced to five years in prison.
Quotes
“What really flatters a man is that you think him worth flattering.” – George Bernard Shaw, writer, Nobel laureate (1856-1950)
“What the object of senile avarice may be I cannot conceive. For can there be anything more absurd than to seek more journey money, the less there remains of the journey?” – Marcus Tullius Cicero, statesman, orator, writer (106-43 BCE)
“Only by going alone in silence, without baggage, can one truly get into the heart of the wilderness. All other travel is mere dust and hotels and baggage and chatter.” – John Muir, naturalist, explorer, and writer (1838-1914)
“What monstrosities would walk the streets were some people’s faces as unfinished as their minds.” – Eric Hoffer, philosopher and author (1902-1983)
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“Never say never, for if you live long enough, chances are you will not be able to abide by its restrictions. Never is a long, undependable time, and life is too full of rich possibilities to have restrictions placed upon it.”
“I am big. It’s the pictures that got small.”
“I’ve given my memoirs far more thought than any of my marriages. You can’t divorce a book.”
“All creative people should be required to leave California for three months every year.”
“When I die, my epitaph should read: She Paid the Bills. That’s the story of my private life.”
sacrilegious
PRONUNCIATION: (sak-ri-LIJ-uhs)
MEANING: (adjective) – Violating what is considered sacred.
ETYMOLOGY: From Middle English, from Old French, from Latin sacrilegium, from sacrilegus (one who steals sacred thing), from scar, from sacer (sacred) + -legere (to gather, steal).
USAGE: “After enjoying his regular morning donut, newly promoted supervisor Mervyn decided to have another, a heretofore sacrilegious activity which elicited gasps from everyone in the vicinity.”
secrete
PRONUNCIATION: (si-KREET)
http://wordsmith.org/words/secrete.mp3
MEANING: (verb tr.)
1. To discharge or release.
2. To conceal; to keep secret.
ETYMOLOGY:
For 1: Back-formation from secretion, from Latin secernere (to separate), from se- (apart) + cernere (to sift). Earliest documented use: 1707.
For 2: Alteration of obsolete verb secret, from Latin secernere (to separate), from se- apart + cernere (to sift). Earliest documented use: 1741.
USAGE:
“Snails and slugs move along on a body part called a foot. This foot constantly secretes mucus that allows them to slowly glide along.” – Laurie Garretson; Snail Bait; Victoria Advocate (Canada); May 17, 2012.
“The bag has a communications device secreted in the lining.” – Will Pavia; Open Chanel to Moscow; The Times (London, UK); May 22, 2012.
Explore “secrete” in the Visual Thesaurus.
http://visualthesaurus.com/?w1=secrete
perspicaciousness
PRONUNCIATION: (puhr-spi-KAY-shuhs-nes)
http://wordsmith.org/words/perspicaciousness.mp3
MEANING: (noun), Keenness of perception and discernment.
ETYMOLOGY: From Latin perspicere (to see through), from per- (through) + -spicere, combining form of specere (to look). Ultimately from the Indo-European root spek- (to observe), which is also the ancestor of such words as suspect, spectrum, bishop (literally, overseer), espionage, despise, telescope, spectator, speculum, and spectacles. Earliest documented use: 1727.
USAGE: “I have to take my hat off to Jean Cocteau, whose perspicaciousness enabled him to predict the current thriving anime scene back in the early 1950s.” – Henshu Techo; Musings; The Daily Yomiuri (Tokyo, Japan); Dec 4, 2004.
Explore “perspicaciousness” in the Visual Thesaurus.
http://visualthesaurus.com/?w1=perspicaciousness
prandial
PRONUNCIATION: (PRAN-dee-uhl)
http://wordsmith.org/words/prandial.mp3
MEANING: (adjective), Of or relating to a meal.
ETYMOLOGY: From Latin prandium (late breakfast, luncheon, or meal). Ultimately from the Indo-European root ed- (to eat, to bite) that is also the source of edible, comestible, obese, etch, fret, edacious, and postprandial.
USAGE: “It’s different in Britain and the US, where school lunch is generally collective and systematised. As the political scientist Jennifer Rutledge notes, state intervention in children’s prandial intake has usually been driven by security fears.” – Elizabeth Farrelly; Women Have Bitten Off More Than They Can Chew With School Lunch; The Sydney Morning Herald (Australia); Oct 8, 2009.
Explore “prandial” in the Visual Thesaurus.
http://visualthesaurus.com/?w1=prandial
schwerpunkt
PRONUNCIATION: (SHVEHR-pungkt)
http://wordsmith.org/words/schwerpunkt.mp3
MEANING: (noun), The point of focus; an area of concentrated effort, especially in a military operation.
ETYMOLOGY: From German Schwerpunkt (center of gravity, focal point), from schwer (weighty) + Punkt (point).
USAGE:
“In the only arty shot, the Dalai Lama, seen in silhouette, sits at the schwerpunkt of a Mondrian-like composition.” – Meir Ronnen; Happy Families?; The Jerusalem Post (Israel); June 25, 2004.
“But is the pledge to abolish Australian Workplace Agreements a masterstroke or a blunder? That question could be the greatest contest of judgment between Beazley and Prime Minister John Howard. Should it be the schwerpunkt of Labor’s attack or will it be an unproductive dilution of forces?” – Terry Sweetman; Kim Finds a Sore Point; The Courier-Mail (Brisbane, Australia); Jun 16, 2006.