Monday, September 14, 2009

crapulous \KRAP-yuh-lus\, adjective:

1. Given to or characterized by gross excess in drinking or eating.
2. Suffering from or due to such excess.

Crapulous is from Late Latin crapulosus, from Latin crapula, from Greek kraipale, drunkenness and its consequences, nausea, sickness, and headache.
kind of a big deal

• A term for a person who is facetiously joking about how important/cool/awesome they are.

"Yeah, so that was me closing a huge deal yesterday...I am kind of a big deal in commercial real estate!"

Trivia

In what gadgets found in most U.S. homes are you likely to find the man-made radioactive isotope americium-241?

• In smoke detectors. There’s a small amount of Am-241—a decay product of plutonium-241—in ionization smoke detectors, which are more widely used than the more expensive photoelectric smoke detectors.

Today in History:

• "The Star Spangled Banner": US anthem was written by attorney Francis Scott Key during the British bombardment of Fort McHenry in Baltimore (1814)
• Luna 2: the spherical Soviet spacecraft became the first man-made object to reach the Moon; it crashed onto the lunar surface (1959)
• Elizabeth Ann Bayley Seton: widow who founded the American Sisters of Charity was canonized by Pope Paul VI, becoming the first US-born saint (1975)
• 1994 Major League Baseball season: was officially canceled by acting commissioner Bud Selig, 34 days after the players' strike began (1994)

Today's Birthdays:

• Ivan Pavlov (1849-1936): physiologist/psychologist who researched conditioned response
• Margaret Sanger (1879?-1966): birth control activist
• Larry Brown (69): NBA hall-of-famer and coach
• Sam Neill (62): actor, Jurassic Park; Zoe Caldwell (76), Harve Presnell (1933-2009), Walter Koenig (73), Nicol Williamson (71), Mary Crosby (50), Faith Ford (45) and Kimberly Williams-Paisley (38)
• Nas (36): rapper/songwriter; other singers born on this date include Joey Heatherton (65), Jon "Bowser" Bauman (62), Ed King (60), Craig Montoya (39) and Amy Winehouse (26)