Today’s WOTD – 19 October 2012

hirtellous

[hur-tel-uhs]

adjective

– minutely hirsute.

Also, hirsutulous.

Origin:
< Latin hirt ( us ) hairy + Neo-Latin -ellus diminutive adj. suffix; see -ous

For example:

‘In a culture in which hirsute men were seen as more virile, the hirtellous youth was considered to be less of a man’.

Today’s aphorism

‘Fascism is nothing but capitalist reaction’.

‘If we had had more time for discussion, we should probably have made many more mistakes’.

On this day

19 October 1924 – Leo Trotsky, one of the founders of the Soviet Union and founder of the Red Army, is thrown out of the Soviet Politburo and his followers persecuted after he opposed Stalin. Trotsky was eventually expelled from the Communist Party and in 1929 was deported from the Soviet Union. He continued his opposition to Stalinism from his base in Mexico.

19 October 2001 – 353 asylum seekers drown when the boat they are on sinks 70km south of Java. The victims included 146 children, 142 women and 65 men. They were travelling from Indonesia to Australia and were predominantly Iraqi. Australian authorities labelled the boat SIEV-X (SIEV is short for ‘Suspected Illegal Entry Vehicle’). The incident became a major political issue and coupled with other incidents, such as the ‘Tampa crisis’ and the ‘Children Overboard affair’, resulted in major changes to Australia’s migration laws, including excising 4,600 islands from Australia’s migration zone and introduction of the controversial ‘Pacific Solution’.