Saturday, January 2, 2010

constitutional \kon-stih-TOO-shuhn-uhl; -TYOO-\, noun:

• A walk taken for one's health.

A constitutional is so called because it is taken for the benefit of one's constitution.
Head Splinter

• A painfully annoying song that gets stuck in your head, in extreme cases, impeding everyday tasks.

I've got "I don't feel like dancing" stuck in my head, it's a real head splinter!!
Trivia
What part of the human anatomy has more sweat glands than any other?

• The sole of the foot. Each foot has about 3,000 sweat glands per square inch, for a total of approximately 250,000. The palms of our hands also have about 3,000 sweat glands per square inch, but cover a smaller surface area.

Today in History

• Granada: last Moorish stronghold in Spain, led by Muhammad XI, surrendered to Roman Catholic monarchs Ferdinand II and Isabella I (1492)
• Vulcan: the "discovery" of a planet closer to the Sun than Mercury was announced by French mathematician Urbain Jean Joseph Le Verrier; it proved to be nonexistent (1860)
• 55 mph limit: Congress and President Richard Nixon set a national speed limit to conserve gasoline following the 1973 oil crisis (1974)

Today's Birthdays

• Rudolf Clausius (1822-1888): physicist and pioneer in thermodynamics, introduced the concept of entropy and restated the second law of thermodynamics; plus, physicist Johann Daniel Titius(1729-1996)
• Isaac Asimov (1920-1992): prolific sci-fi writer of the Foundation Series and I, Robot
• Jack Hanna (63): zoologist and TV personality
• Christy Turlington (41): Calvin Klein, Maybelline model who has written a book, Living Yoga
• Taye Diggs (38): Private Practice's Dr. Sam Bennett; also, actors Wendy Phillips (58), Gabrielle Carteris (49), Tia Carrere (43), Cuba Gooding, Jr. (41), Dax Shepard (35), Paz Vega (34) and Kate Bosworth (27)