John McCain (born 1936) is the senior United States Senator from Arizona and
presidential nominee of the Republican Party in the 2008 presidential
election. During the Vietnam War, he nearly lost his life in the 1967 USS
Forrestal fire. In October 1967, he was shot down and held as a prisoner of
war until 1973, experiencing episodes of torture; his war wounds left him
with lifelong physical limitations. Elected to the U.S. House of
Representatives in 1982, he served two terms, and was then elected to the
U.S. Senate in 1986.
Read the rest of this article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_McCain
Barack Obama (born 1961) is the junior United States Senator from Illinois
and presidential nominee of the Democratic Party in the 2008 presidential
election. Obama is the first African American to be nominated by a major
political party for president. A graduate of Columbia University and Harvard
Law School, where he served as president of the Harvard Law Review, he
worked as a community organizer, served three terms in the Illinois Senate,
and taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School. Obama
delivered the keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention and
was elected to the Senate in November 2004.
Read the rest of this article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Obama
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Today's selected anniversaries:
1737:
The Teatro di San Carlo in Naples, Italy, currently the oldest active opera
house in Europe, was inaugurated.
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teatro_di_San_Carlo)
1852:
Count Cavour became prime minister of the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia,
which soon expanded to become the Kingdom of Italy.
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camillo_Benso,_conte_di_Cavour)
1890:
London's City and South London Railway, the first deep-level underground
railway in the world, opened, running a distance of 5.1 km (3.2 mi) between
the City of London and Stockwell.
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_and_South_London_Railway)
1979:
Hundreds of Iranian students supporting Iran's post-revolutionary regime
seized the U.S. embassy in Tehran, beginning a 444-day hostage crisis.
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_hostage_crisis)
1995:
Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was mortally wounded by Yigal Amir
while at a peace rally at the Kings of Israel Square in Tel Aviv.
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Yitzhak_Rabin)
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Wiktionary's word of the day:
vituperative: (adj) Marked by harsh spoken or written abuse; invective;
scolding; abusive.
(
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/vituperative)
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Wikiquote quote of the day:
When you get to a fork in the road, take it.
--Yogi Berra
(
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Yogi_Berra)