Tuesday, July 14, 2009

louche \LOOSH\, adjective:

• Of questionable taste or morality; disreputable or indecent; dubious; shady.

Louche is from French louche, "shady, suspicious," from Old French losche, "squint-eyed," from Latin luscus, "one-eyed."

Conversational Blue Balls

• When someone brings up a topic when talking but immediately drops it and refuses to switch back to the dropped topic.

Conversational Blue Balls is when:

"Goodness, did you hear about what happened?"
"What happened?"
"Anyways, I'm gonna go."
"Wait, what happened?"
"Oh, don't worry about it."
Trivia
For what use was the synthetic fiber Kevlar originally developed?

• To replace steel in radial tires. Kevlar, which is stronger and lighter than steel, meant lighter tires and more fuel-efficient vehicles.

Today in History:

• the Matterhorn: the Swiss-Italian Alp was first scaled, by British mountaineer Edward Whymper (1865)
• Billy the Kid: the 21-year-old outlaw was shot and killed by Sheriff Pat Garrett in New Mexico (1881)
• Mariner 4: spacecraft performed the first flyby of another planet and sent back the first pictures of the surface of Mars (1965)
• large denominations of United States currency: were officially discontinued by the Federal Reserve System, leaving the $100 bill as the largest unit of circulating currency (1969)
• Bastille Day: marks the storming of the Bastille by Parisians (1789)

Today's Birthdays:

• Irving Stone (1903-1989): author of Lust for Life, The Agony and the Ecstasy; also, writers John Gibson Lockhart (1794-1854), Isaac Bashevis Singer (1904-1991) and Natalia Ginzburg (1916-1991)
• Woody Guthrie (1912-1967): folksinger who wrote "This Land Is Your Land"
• Gerald Ford (1913-2006): first appointed vice-POTUS to become President; he was selected as vice president when Spiro Agnew resigned, and a year later succeeded Richard Nixon
• Ingmar Bergman (1918-2007): Swedish film director, Fanny and Alexander; other filmmakers born on this date include Eric Laneuville (57) and Scott Rudin (51)
• Matthew Fox (43): Jack Shephard on Lost; other actors born on this date include Dale Robertson (86), Harry Dean Stanton (83), Polly Bergen (79), Vincent Pastore (63), Jackie Earle Haley (48), Missy Gold (39) and Scott Porter (30)