4 January 2013

pampas

[pam-puh z; attributively pam-puh s; Spanish pahm-pahs]

plural noun, singular pampa [-puh; Spanish -pah]

– the vast grassy plains of southern South America, especially in Argentina.

Example sentence:

‘The Argentinian government, to populate the country (Patagonia) and to attract settlers to its vast pampas, hit on the idea of giving at least 150 acres of land, seed, implements, horses etc, tax free, all loans to be repayable after five years’.

– Emilio Duran’s memoirs, 1904 – 1976.

Today’s aphorism

‘Half of the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don’t mean to do harm. But the harm does not interest them’.

– T.S. Eliot

On this day

4 January 1903 – Thomas Edison electrocutes an elephant to prove the dangers of ‘alternating current’ electricity. He had previously electrocuted stray cats and dogs and even horses and cows. He snidely referred to it as ‘getting Westinghoused’. Topsy, the elephant, had squashed 4 trainers at the Luna Park Zoo on Coney Island, so the zoo had decided to hang her, before someone suggested she ‘ride the lightning’. More on this at http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2008/01/dayintech_0104

 4 January 1965 – death of Thomas Stearns Eliot (T.S. Eliot), poet, playwright, publisher, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, described as ‘arguably the most important English language poet of the 20th century’. Wrote ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock‘,  ’The Waste Land‘, ‘Ash Wednesday‘, ‘The Hollow Men‘. Born 26 September 1888.