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Politics : Idea Of The Day -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: IQBAL LATIF who wrote (48965)	8/27/2005 6:48:54 AM
From: IQBAL LATIF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 50167

Word of the Day for Saturday August 27, 2005 descant \DES-kant\, noun: 1. (Music) (a) A melody or counterpoint sung above the plain song of the tenor. (b) The upper voice in part music. 2. A discourse or discussion on a theme. \DES-kant; des-KANT; dis-\, intransitive verb: 1. (a) To sing or play a descant. (b) To sing. 2. To comment freely; to discourse at length. [T]hese to their nests, Were slunk, all but the wakeful nightingale; She all night long her amorous descant sung. --John Milton, [1]Paradise Lost When they start on one of their polarised descants, whether on state education, water rates, crime, the BBC or whatever, they sound like a bumble bee and a wasp fighting in a jam jar. --Gillian Reynolds, "The biggest things to hit radio," [2]Daily Telegraph, May 14, 1999 Mr. Ackroyd's descant on "Great Expectations" is the work of a master. --Alison Lurie, "Hanging Out With Hogarth," [3]New York Times, October 11, 1992 In a custom associated with Athenian gatherings but almost certainly followed elsewhere as well, a myrtle branch was passed around the room, and each of the assembled would descant as the wine flowed. --David Barber, "Children of Orpheus," [4]The Atlantic, June 10, 1998 The police amusingly descant on these jottings: "I can't believe he'd ever write a sentence like 'I shall be compelled to take steps to silence you!'" --Christopher Buckley, "The Chekhov of Coldsands-on-Sea," [5]New York Times, November 16, 1997 _________________________________________________________

To: IQBAL LATIF who wrote (48965)	8/27/2005 11:58:14 AM
From: IQBAL LATIF	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 50167

August 27 First successful oil well drilled 1859: Edwin Laurentine Drake struck oil on this day while drilling in Titusville, Pennsylvania. Drake, a railway conductor in New Haven, Connecticut, had studied the techniques of drilling salt wells. He was encouraged to drill for oil by George H. Bissell, a local landowner who was aware of Benjamin Silliman's report of the potential value of petroleum. Drake began drilling in 1858 and finally struck oil at a depth of 21 metres (69 feet) on this day. With the spread of Drake's drilling techniques, Titusville and other northwestern Pennsylvania communities became boomtowns. 1979: Louis Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma, was assassinated by the Provisional Irish Republican Army. 1939: German Ernst Heinrich Heinkel's He 178, a turbojet-powered aircraft, made the first jet flight. 1928: The Kellogg-Briand Pact was signed between France and the United States in a series of peacekeeping efforts after World War I. 1776: During the American Revolution, British forces under General William Howe defeated George Washington and the American Continental Army in the Battle of Long Island. 1576: The great Italian Renaissance painter Titian died in Venice.