Word of the Day for Sunday, February 3, 2008

perquisite \PUR-kwuh-zit\, noun:

1. A profit or benefit in addition to a salary or wages.
2. Broadly: The benefits of a position or office.
3. A gratuity or tip for services performed.
4. Anything to which someone has or claims the sole right.

Urban Word of the Day: superbowl
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=superbowl&defid=485350

• 30 second clips of men running in between commercials.

Person 1: Who do you think will win the Superbowl?
Person 2: What's that? Oh, those men running in between the commercials?

Trivia
What was the name of Morticia's carnivorous African strangler plant on the TV sitcom The Addams Family?

• Cleopatra.

Today in History

• 15th Amendment: was ratified, granting black men the right to vote (1870)
• income tax: was authorized on a federal level in the US (1913)
• the day the music died: a plane crash killed rock stars Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and "the Big Bopper" (1959)
• Luna 9: Soviet spacecraft became the first to soft-land on the moon (1966)

Today's Birthdays

• Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847): composer, conductor and renaissance man; grandson of philosopher Moses Mendelssohn
• Gertrude Stein (1874-1946 ): avant garde author
• Norman Rockwell (1894-1978): illustrator who painted a nostalgic, idealized picture of small-town US life
• Paul Sarbanes (75): senator who sponsored the Sarbanes-Oxley Act; he served from 1977-2007, making him the longest-serving senator in Maryland history
• Nathan Lane (52): comic actor, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, The Producers; other actors born today include Morgan Fairchild (58) and Isla Fisher (32)