Saturday, June 13, 2009

prestidigitation \pres-tuh-dij-uh-TAY-shuhn\, noun:

• Skill in or performance of tricks; sleight of hand.

Prestidigitation was adopted from French, from preste, "nimble, quick" (from Italian presto, from Late Latin praestus, "ready at hand") + Latin digitus, "finger." One skilled in sleight of hand is a prestidigitator.

genpop

• General Population. As in the open area in a prison. From Oz on HBO. A sucky area to be.

This sucks. We're stuck in genpop with the rest of these hillibilies.
Trivia
What famous American writer and humorist once quipped, “I respect a man who knows how to spell a word more than one way”?

• Mark Twain.

Today in History:

• Thurgood Marshall: became the first black man to be nominated as a US Supreme Court justice; he served for 24 years (1967)
• Pentagon Papers: a secret study of the US involvement in Vietnam began to appear in The New York Times (1971)
• Pioneer 10: the space probe flew out of the solar system, the first manmade object to do so (1983)
• Mehmet Ali Agca: would-be assassin of Pope John Paul II in 1981 was pardoned by Italy (2000)

Today's Birthdays:

• William Butler Yeats (1865-1939): poet and playwright who led the Irish literary renaissance; also, authors Fanny Burney (1752-1840), Dorothy L. Sayers (1893-1957) and Mark Van Doren (1894-1972)
• Red Grange (1903-1991): legendary gridiron athlete who CNN named greatest football player of all time
• Siegfried (70): magician and tamer of white tigers
• Ban Ki-moon (65): 8th secretary-general of the UN
• Jamie Walters (40): actor, Beverly Hills, 90210; also, actors Malcolm McDowell (66), Stellan Skarsgård and Richard Thomas (both 57), Tim Allen (56), Ally Sheedy (47), Ethan Embry (31) and Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen (23)