ground zero
howard richler
commentator who first referenced the WTC site as "ground zero."
Anybody know?
Donna Richoux
It sure would help to know how far back you've gotten it already, so we
could check for anything earlier.
The CNN website shows four hits for the term on 12 Sept, nothing on the
11th. How close the correlation is between archive date and air date I
don't know.
I noticed it showed hundreds of uses of the term before Sept. 11, for
hurricanes, war zones, campaigns, etc.
--
Best wishes -- Donna Richoux
Richard Fontana
Why assume it was a "commentator" who first used "ground zero" anyway? My
memory is of news people on any number of channels or stations saying
things like "the rescue workers here [at the site of the World Trade
Center] have taken to callling it 'ground zero'".
Harlan Messinger
I don't know that you could find any one person's reference from which
all others were derived, because it was an obvious term. The term
"ground zero" has existed for a long time. During the six years I
lived across the street from the Pentagon during the eighties, I would
sometimes reflect on my proximity to ground zero (at least, one of
several potential ground zeroes, the White House being the one three
blocks away from my office). Chilling.
--
Harlan Messinger
There is no xyz in my actual e-mail address.
David S Chesler
I've been meaning to ask the same thing.
At some point very soon after the events of that morning, Ground Zero
took on a meaning in our collective consciousness; it no longer meant
"The spot underneath where the nuclear bomb exploded, or any place
that looks like such a place", certainly an apt description of that
section of lower Manhattan, instead it came to mean precisely "that
spot in lower Manhattan where the World Trade Center towers used to be".
Similarly, when did "United We Stand" come to be the motto of new
national mood of righteously angry patriotism? Until that time I'd
never thought of it except in the context of the musical admonition
"United we stand, divided we fall" (which in turn brings up "In
unity there is strength. In egg salad there is mayonaise.") The
philatelic division of the United States Post Office, which is usually
very slow and predictable, added their "United We Stand" stamp in
response to the events, and announced it on October 2.
That "Let's roll" became associated with that mood of course derives
from the words transmitted over the cell phone by one of the passengers
who resisted in the flight which crashed in Pennsylvania. It's not
all that unusual a phrase: I had a college roommate who would ask
"Ready to roll?" or simply "RTR?".
--
David Chesler <che...@post.harvard.edu>
http://www.geocities.com/chesler.geo
Richard Fontana
>
>Similarly, when did "United We Stand" come to be the motto of new
>national mood of righteously angry patriotism? Until that time I'd
>never thought of it except in the context of the musical admonition
>"United we stand, divided we fall" (which in turn brings up "In
>unity there is strength. In egg salad there is mayonaise.") The
>philatelic division of the United States Post Office, which is usually
>very slow and predictable, added their "United We Stand" stamp in
>response to the events, and announced it on October 2.
I don't know to what extent it's related, but "United We Stand
America" was the name of Ross Perot's anti-establishment
political organization in 1992.
Donna Richoux
History-wise, Bartlett's traces it back to:
United we stand; divided we fall. Common paraphrase of "By uniting
we stand, by dividing we fall." the Liberty Song, John Dickinson,
1768.
Whiting's "Early American Proverbs" has the same as the first citation,
then many citations in the 1770s and 1780s (the US Revolutionary War)
referring to it. The actual wording of "United we stand, divided we
fall" shows up in 1807, Andrew Jackson's correspondence.
The Bloomsbury dictionaries at Xrefer.com call it only "a proverb."
To address your specific question, today's "angry patriots" draw heavily
on the history and writing of the Founding Fathers and the Revolutionary
War. Even "patriots" rings with the sound of that era. So it makes sense
to me that a slogan of that time would appeal to them (even if the exact
form showed up 20-30 years later).
--
Best -- Donna Richoux