Saturday, November 20, 2010 Pt 1

weal \WEEL\, noun:

1. Well-being, prosperity, or happiness.
2. A raised mark on the surface of the body produced by a blow.
3. (Obsolete:) the state or body politic.

Weal shares the Old English root wela with welfare and a host of other English words. The ultimate source in Proto-Indo-European is wel-, which is also the ancestor of words related to will.
History

• Peregrine White: the first child of English parents born in present-day New England, came into the world on the Mayflower, docked in Massachusetts Bay (1620)
• New Jersey: the Garden State became the first state to ratify the Bill of Rights (1789)
• Nuremberg trials: an Allied tribunal began trying Nazis for war crimes; the defense of "I was following orders" was not accepted (1945)
• Elizabeth II: the future queen of England married Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, in Westminster Abbey (1947)

Birthdays

• Edwin Powell Hubble (1889-1953): astronomer, namesake of the Hubble Space Telescope
• Alistair Cooke (1908-2004): longtime host of Masterpiece Theatre; journalist Judy Woodruff (64) shares this birth date
• Nadine Gordimer (87): author known for her anti-apartheid views in her native South Africa; other writers born on this date include Thomas Chatterton (1752-1770) and Selma Lagerlöf (1858-1940)
• Joseph Biden (68): US vice president; presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy (1925-1968) was also born on this date
• Joel McHale (39): comic actor, star of Community ; also, actors Estelle Parsons (83), Richard Dawson (78), Dick Smothers (72), Veronica Hamel (67), Samuel E. Wright (64), Richard Masur (62), Bo Derek (54), Sean Young (51), Ming-Na (47), Joshua Gomez (35) and Dan Byrd (25)