On This Day:
Tuesday March 24, 2015 This is the 83rd day of the year, with 282 days remaining in 2015. Fact of the Day: personal names The story of the use of personal names is sketchy. The origin of language itself, about 1.5 million years ago, also is believed to mark the use of first names to distinguish one man from his neighbor. The oldest surviving personal name is believed by archaeologists to be En-lil-ti, a word that appears on a Sumerian tablet dating c 3300 BC, found outside Baghdad in 1936. If, however, that was the name of a deity, then the true first person name is attributed to N'armer, the Father of Men, Egypt's first pharaoh, c 3000 BC. The custom of family (surnames) names did not really arise until the 11th century in Europe. Prior to the 11th century a surname, if used at all, represented the name of a primitive clan or tribe. The science of names is called onomastics.
Holidays Feast day of St. Dunchad, St. Hildelith, St. Macartan, St. Aldemar, St. Simon of Trent, St. William of Norwich, St. Catherine of Vadstena, and St. Irenaeus of Sirmeum.
Events 1401 - Tamerlane the Great captured Damascus in Syria.
1664 - Roger Williams was granted a charter to colonize Rhode Island.
1765 - Britain enacted the Quartering Act, requiring American colonists to provide temporary housing to British soldiers.
1882 - German scientist Robert Koch announced the discovery of the bacillus responsible for tuberculosis.
1883 - Long-distance telephone service was started between Chicago and New York.
1900 - Mayor Van Wyck of New York broke ground for the New York subway tunnel that would link Manhattan and Brooklyn.
1934 - The Philippines were granted independence, which did not take effect until July 4, 1946.
1955 - Tennessee Williams' play "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" opened on Broadway.
1958 - Elvis Presley was inducted into the U.S. Army.
1976 - The president of Argentina, Isabel Peron, was deposed by the country's military.
1989 - The supertanker Exxon Valdez ran aground on a reef in Alaska's Prince William Sound and began leaking eleven million gallons of crude, the worst oil spill in U.S. history.
1999 - NATO launched airstrikes against Yugoslavia, marking the first time in its 50-year existence that it had ever attacked a sovereign country. The NATO offensive came in response to a new wave of ethnic cleansing launched by Serbian forces against the Kosovar Albanians.
Births 1494 - Georgius Agricola, German scholar, scientist known as the "Father of Mineralogy."
1834 - John Wesley Powell, geologist, explorer, Director of U.S. Geological Survey.
1855 - Andrew Mellon, American financier, philanthropist, Secretary of the Treasury.
1887 - Fatty (Roscoe) Arbuckle, American actor.
1902 - Thomas E. Dewey, prosecutor, New York governor, two-time presidential candidate.
Deaths 1603 - Queen Elizabeth I of England, after 44 years of rule; King James VI of Scotland then ascends to the throne, uniting England and Scotland under a single British monarch.
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