Joseph B. Foraker (1846–1917) was the 37th Governor of Ohio (1886–1890) and a Republican U.S. Senator (1897–1909). Born in rural Ohio, Foraker enlisted in the Union Army at age 16 and fought in the Civil War. After the war, he was a member of Cornell's first graduating class, and became a lawyer; he was elected a judge in 1879. Although defeated in his first run for governor in 1883, he was elected in 1885. Foraker lost re-election in 1889, but was elected senator by the legislature in 1896. In the Senate, he supported the Spanish-American War and the annexation of the Philippines and Puerto Rico. He differed with President Theodore Roosevelt over the Brownsville Affair, in which black soldiers had been accused of terrorizing a Texas town; Roosevelt had dismissed the entire battalion. Foraker fought unsuccessfully for their reinstatement, and Roosevelt helped defeat Foraker's re-election bid. In 1972, the Army reversed the dismissals and cleared the soldiers.

Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_B._Foraker

_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:

1869:

Das Rheingold, the first of four operas in Der Ring des Nibelungen by German composer Richard Wagner, was first performed in Munich. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Das_Rheingold

1914:

First World War: The German submarine U-9 sank three Royal Navy cruisers, resulting in approximately 1,450 deaths. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Action_of_22_September_1914

1979:

An American Vela satellite detected an unidentified flash of light near the Prince Edward Islands in the Indian Ocean, thought to be a nuclear weapons test. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vela_incident

2013:

Two suicide bombers attacked a church in Peshawar, Pakistan, killing 127 and injuring over 250 others in the deadliest attack on the Christian minority in the country's history. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peshawar_church_bombing

_____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day:

martial: 1. (comparable) Of, relating to, or suggestive of war; warlike. 2. (comparable) Connected with or relating to armed forces or the profession of arms or military life. 3. (comparable) Characteristic of or befitting a warrior; having a military bearing; soldierly. 4. (not comparable, astrology, obsolete) Pertaining to the astrological influence of the planet Mars. 5. (not comparable, astronomy, obsolete) Of or relating to the planet Mars; Martian. 6. (not comparable, chemistry, medicine, obsolete) Containing, or relating to, iron (which was symbolically associated with the planet Mars by alchemists); chalybeate, ferric, ferrous. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/martial

___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day:

We must not draw general conclusions from certain particular principles, though, in the main, true ones. We must not suppose that, because a man is a rational animal, he will therefore always act rationally; or, because he has such or such a predominant passion, that he will act invariably and consequentially in the pursuit of it. No. We are complicated machines: and though we have one main-spring, that gives motion to the whole, we have an infinity of little wheels, which, in their turns, retard, precipitate, and sometimes stop that motion.   --Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Philip_Stanhope,_4th_Earl_of_Chesterfield