Today in History (March 30th):
1746: Birthdays: Spanish painter Francisco Jose de Goya.
1811: Birthdays: German chemist Robert Bunsen, inventor of the Bunsen gas burner.
1820: Birthdays: English author Anna Sewell (Black Beauty).
1840: Birthdays: English social reformer Charles Booth.
1842: Dr. Crawford Long became the first physician to use anesthetic (ether) in surgery.
1853: Birthdays: Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh.
1858: U.S. patent granted to Hymen Lipman for a pencil with an attached eraser.
1867: U.S. Secretary of State William Seward reached an agreement with Russia for the purchase of Alaska for $7.2 million in gold, a move referred to by the media as “Seward’s Folly.”
1870: The 15th Amendment, granting African-American men the right to vote, was adopted into the U.S. Constitution.
1880: Birthdays: Irish dramatist Sean O’Casey.
1902: Birthdays: Philanthropist Brooke Astor.
1913: Birthdays: Former CIA Director Richard Helms; Singer Frankie Laine.
1923: The Cunard liner Laconia arrived in New York City, the first passenger ship to circumnavigate the world, a cruise of 130 days.
1926: Birthdays: TV host Peter Marshall.
1929: Birthdays: Actor Richard Dysart.
1930: Birthdays: Actor John Astin.
1937: Birthdays: Actor Warren Beatty.
1940: Birthdays: Basketball Hall of Fame member Jerry Lucas.
1941: Birthdays: Rock musician Graeme Edge.
1945: Birthdays: British blues/rock guitarist and rock ‘n’ roll Hall of Fame member Eric Clapton.
1950: Birthdays: Actor Robbie Coltrane.
1957: Birthdays: Actor Paul Reiser.
1962: Birthdays: Singer MC Hammer, born Stanley Burrell.
1964: Birthdays: Singer Tracy Chapman.
1965: Birthdays: Television commentator Piers Morgan.
1968: Birthdays: Singer Celine Dion.
1975: The South Vietnamese city of Da Nang fell to North Vietnamese forces.
1979: Birthdays: Singer Norah Jones.
1981: U.S. President Ronald Reagan was shot by John Hinckley Jr. outside a Washington hotel. White House press secretary James Brady, a Secret Service agent and a Washington police officer also were wounded. Hinckley was found not guilty by reason of insanity.
1998: Armenian Premier Robert Kocharian was elected president in a runoff election in the former Soviet republic.
1999: A jury in Oregon awarded $81 million in damages to the family of a smoker who had died from lung cancer. A state judge reduced the punitive portion to $32 million.
2003: An Iraqi spokesman said that 4,000 volunteers from 23 countries were ready to carry out suicide attacks against the U.S.-led coalition.
2005: Vatican officials said Pope John Paul II had a nasal feeding tube inserted after reportedly having trouble swallowing. The next day the 84-year-old pontiff was given the last rites of the Roman Catholic Church.
2006: Journalist Jill Carroll, a freelance reporter for The Christian Science Monitor, was freed in Baghdad after being held for 82 days by kidnappers.
2007: Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Palestinian refugees wouldn’t be allowed to return to their original homes in what is now Israel, one of the provisions listed by Arab leaders as necessary to normalize relations.
2008: Radical Iraqi Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr ordered his militia to end military action in Basra in exchange for amnesty for his supporters and other concessions. Flooding in Tanzania mines killed at least 75 men, government officials said. Many of the victims appeared to have been engulfed by rising water as they worked.
2009: Police at Lahore, Pakistan, said at least 10 people died in the eight-hour standoff with gunmen who stormed a police academy. Some reports put the death toll at 26 with more than 50 injured.
2010: Gunmen killed 10 students, ages 8 to 21, when they apparently failed to stop at a checkpoint, similar to those used by drug traffickers, in the Mexican state of Durango while en route to pick up government scholarships. The United States reported plans to spend an additional $1 billion to rebuild earthquake-ravaged Haiti’s infrastructure and re-create its fragile government.
2011: U.S. President Barack Obama called for cutting oil imports by one-third within a decade, a goal he called reasonable, achievable and necessary.
2012: U.S. stock indexes had their best first quarter since the 1990s. The Dow Jones industrial average ended March at 13,212.04, rising 8.1 percent since Jan. 1 and the S&P 500 was up 12 percent for the same period, best first quarter since 1998. Nasdaq finished up 18.7 percent, best first quarter since 1991.
Quotes
“I hate to spread rumors, but what else can you do with them?” – Anonymous
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“Experience is not what happens to a man; it is what a man does with what happens to him.” – Aldous Huxley, novelist (1894-1963)
“I react pragmatically. Where the market works, I’m for that. Where the government is necessary, I’m for that. I’m deeply suspicious of somebody who says, “I’m in favor of privatization,” or, “I’m deeply in favor of public ownership.” I’m in favor of whatever works in the particular case.” – John Kenneth Galbraith, economist (1908-2006)
“They are happy men whose natures sort with their vocations.” – Francis Bacon, essayist, philosopher, and statesman (1561-1626)
Vincent Van Gogh (1853-1890) postimpressionist painter, born in the Netherlands:
“A good picture is equivalent to a good deed.”
“As we advance in life it becomes more and more difficult, but in fighting the difficulties the inmost strength of the heart is developed.”
“Conscience is a man’s compass.”
“Do not quench your inspiration and your imagination; do not become the slave of your model.”
“Great things are done by a series of small things brought together.”
“Great things are not done by impulse, but a series of small things brought together.”
“Happiness… it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort.”
“How can I be useful, of what service can I be? There is something inside me, what can it be?”
“I am not an adventurer by choice but by fate.”
“I can’t work without a model. I won’t say I turn my back on nature ruthlessly in order to turn a study into a picture, arranging the colors, enlarging and simplifying; but in the matter of form I am too afraid of departing from the possible and the true.”
“I dream my painting, and then I paint my dream.”
armigerous
PRONUNCIATION: (ahr-MIJ-ehr-us)
MEANING: (adjective), Bearing or entitled to bear heraldic arms.
ETYMOLOGY: From Latin armi-, arms + -ger bearing + ous.
USAGE: “Kelton was anxious to become one of the armigerous classes, little realizing that their function under the current ruler was to bear arms in battle.”
dauphin
PRONUNCIATION: (DAW-fin)
http://wordsmith.org/words/dauphin.mp3
MEANING: (noun), An heir apparent in business, politics, etc.
ETYMOLOGY: From the title of the eldest son of a king of France and the direct heir to the throne, from 1350 to 1830. The title came from the dolphins that adorned the coat of arms, from Old French daulphin (dolphin), from Latin delphinus, from Greek delphin, from delphus (womb), from the shape of the organ. Earliest documented use: 1485.
USAGE:
“James Murdoch’s elder brother, Lachlan, long regarded as the dauphin, resigned his positions at News Corp and retreated to Australia in 2005.” – Peter Wilby; The Sun King’s Long Goodbye; New Statesman (London, UK); Feb 10, 2011.
“Bush’s memoir should prompt renewed reflections upon his catastrophic presidency. It is really a saga of how a dauphin could take the leading power in the world and leave it crippled.” – Jacob Heilbrunn; George Bush’s Unmemorable Memoir; The National Interest (Washington, DC); Nov 8, 2010.
Explore “dauphin” in the Visual Thesaurus.
http://visualthesaurus.com/?w1=dauphin
zeitgeist
PRONUNCIATION: (TSYT-gyst)
http://wordsmith.org/words/zeitgeist.mp3
MEANING: (noun), The defining spirit of a particular period: the general cultural, political, intellectual, and moral climate of an era.
ETYMOLOGY: From German Zeitgeist (spirit of the time), from Zeit (time) + Geist (spirit).
USAGE: “Once again Lionel Shriver has stomped into the middle of a pressing national debate with a great ordeal of a novel So Much For That that’s impossible to ignore. … If Jodi Picoult has her finger on the zeitgeist, Shriver has her hands around its throat.” – Ron Charles; So Much For That; The Washington Post; Mar 17, 2010.
Explore “zeitgeist” in the Visual Thesaurus.
http://visualthesaurus.com/?w1=zeitgeist
lucubrate
PRONUNCIATION: (LOO-kyoo-brayt)
http://wordsmith.org/words/lucubrate.mp3
MEANING: (verb intr.), To work (such as study, write, discourse) laboriously or learnedly.
ETYMOLOGY: Here’s a word that literally encapsulates the idiom “to burn the midnight oil”. It’s derived from Latin lucubrare (to work by lamplight), from lucere (to shine). Ultimately from the Indo-European root leuk- (light) that’s resulted in other words such as lunar, lunatic, light, lightning, lucid, illuminate, illustrate, translucent, lux, and lynx.
USAGE: “So MPs have voted to lucubrate less. To lucubrate fewer? To sit for fewer midnight hours. To work less antisocial hours. To have less/fewer late nights.” – Philip Howard; Less is More Prevalent; The Times (London, UK); Nov 1, 2002.