5 March 2014
efficacy
[ef-i-kuh-see]
noun, plural ef·fi·ca·cies.
– capacity for producing a desired result or effect; effectiveness: a remedy of great efficacy.
Origin:
1520–30; < Latin efficācia, equivalent to efficāc- (see efficacious) + -ia -y3
Related forms
non·ef·fi·ca·cy, noun
Today’s aphorism
All lies and jest, still, a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest.
– Simon and Garfunkel, The Boxer
On this day
5 March 1946 – The term ‘Iron Curtain’ to describe the Soviet Union and Communist Europe, is coined in a speech by Winston Churchill.
5 March 1953 – USSR leader Joseph Stalin died at his dacha at Kuntseva, 15km west of Moscow, following a stroke three days earlier. An autopsy suggested he may have died from ingesting warfarin, a rat poison which thins the blood, and that this may have caused the cerebral hemorrhage. The warfarin may have been added to his food by Deputy Premier Beria and Nikita Khrushchev. It was later revealed by former Politburo member, Vyacheslav Molotov in his 1993 memoirs that Beria had boasted of poisoning Stalin.
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Those observant ones among you, would have noticed that quality control failed yesterday. The ‘On This Day’ section listed events for today instead of 4 March. So! To avoid anyone feeling ripped off, here is the ‘On This Day’ list for 4 March:
4 March – National Grammar Day.
4 March 1918 – first case of Spanish flu is identified when company cook, Albert Gitchell reports sick at Fort Riley, Kansas. The influenza pandemic infected 500 million people across the globe, killing an estimated 50 to 100 million people, or between 3% and 6% of the global population. The 1918 Spanish Flu killed more people in 24 weeks than AIDS killed in 24 years. It killed more people in one year than the Bubonic Plague (Black Death), killed in a century. The flu affected the entire planet. It was named the Spanish flu after wartime censors in Germany, France, Britain and the US banned reporting of it in order to maintain morale. Spain was a neutral country during World War I, so the media was free to report the impact of the pandemic in that country, including the grave illness of Spanish King Alfonso XIII, giving rise to it being called the Spanish flu.
4 March 1987 – President Ronald Reagan admits that the U.S. negotiated the Iran-Contra deal, which swapped ‘military arms for hostages’ in order to secure the release of hostages from Iran