Monday, March 16, 2009

cormorant \KOR-mur-unt; -muh-rant\, noun:

1. Any species of Phalacrocorax, a genus of sea birds having a sac under the beak; the shag. Cormorants devour fish voraciously, and have become the emblem of gluttony. They are generally black, and hence are called sea ravens, and coalgeese.
2. A gluttonous, greedy, or rapacious person.

Cormorant comes from Old French cormareng, "raven of the sea," from corb, "raven" (from Latin corvus) + marenc, "of the sea" (from Latin marinus, from mare, "sea").

Whole Grazer

• Person who feels as though Whole Foods is so expensive that in order to get their money's worth, they have to try every sample available, often multiple times

That place is expensive, but he's a Whole Grazer so he just wanders around eating samples until he has eaten so much that it has paid for his groceries.

Trivia

What use did Leonardo da Vinci envision for the parachute-like device he sketched more than 500 years ago?

• Rescuing people from fires in tall buildings when there was no other means of escape.

Today in History:

• Samoset: Native American made a sudden appearance among the Pilgrims at Plymouth Colony, greeting them in English (1622)
• West Point: the US Military Academy was established; graduates include US presidents Ulysses S. Grant and Dwight D. Eisenhower (1802)
• Robert Goddard: physicist launched the first liquid fuel rocket, in Auburn, Massachusetts; "Nell" the rocket traveled 2.5 seconds and landed in a cabbage field (1926)
• My Lai massacre: US soldiers killed hundreds of unarmed civilians in the Vietnam village of My Lai (1968)

Today's Birthdays:

• James Madison (1751-1836): Founding Father and fourth POTUS
• Georg Simon Ohm (1789-1854): German physicist who formulated Ohm's law of electrical resistance
• Maxim Gorky (1868-1936): writer of short stories and novels
• Bernardo Bertolucci (69): director, The Last Emperor
• Jerry Jeff Walker (67): country singer, "Mr. Bojangles"; musicians Ray Benson (58), Nancy Wilson (55), Patty Griffin (45) and Wolfgang Van Halen (18) share this birth date
• Victor Garber (60): actor, Alias, Eli Stone; also, actors Jerry Lewis (83), Erik Estrada (60), Kate Nelligan (58), Isabelle Huppert (54), Lauren Graham (42), Alan Tudyk (38) and Brooke Burns (31)