Monday, February 15, 2010

vivify \VIV-uh-fy\, transitive verb:

1. To endue with life; to make alive; to animate.
2. To make more lively or intense.

Vivify comes from French vivifier, from Late Latin vivificare, from Latin vivus, alive.

yawn pong

• A game played by tired people. In short, one person yawns and then the other person does. Should the original yawner yawn twice before thesecond person yawns once, player one has one point.

We played tweleve rounds of yawn pong last night.

Trivia

According to the U.S. Constitution, how many years must a natural-born U.S. citizen have lived in the United States to be eligible to serve as president?

• 14, under Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution.

Today's Holidays

• Presidents' Day - The third Monday in February, observed in the United States as a legal holiday in commemoration of the birthdays of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln.
• Clean Monday — celebrated today — is the Monday that begins the season of Lent, as observed by Eastern Orthodox churches.

History

• USS Maine: exploded and sank in Havana harbor, helping to provoke the Spanish-American War (1898)
• Decimal Day: the UK and Ireland switched their currencies to a decimal system (1971)
• Soviet invasion of Afghanistan: the Soviet Union announced that all its troops had left Afghanistan, nine years after the invasion began (1989)
• Canadian flag: red-and-white maple leaf banner was adopted (1965)
• YouTube: video sharing website launched in the US (2005)

Berfdays, yo!

• Galileo Galilei (1564-1642): physicist/mathematician, considered the father of modern astronomy; plus, mathematician Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947)
• Louis XV (1710-1774): king of France
• Henry Steinway (1797-1871): piano man; plus, musicians Brian Holland (69), Henry Threadgill (66) and Melissa Manchester (59)
• Cyrus McCormick (1809-1884): inventor of the mechanical reaper; also, Tiffany's founder Charles Lewis Tiffany (1812-1902)
• Susan B. Anthony (1820-1906): suffragette; plus, feminist Susan Brownmiller (75)
• Matt Groening (56): creator of The Simpsons
• Joseph R. Gannascoli (51): Vito Spatafore on The Sopranos; also, actors John Barrymore (1882-1942), Kevin McCarthy (96), Allan Arbus (92), Harvey Korman (1927-2008), Claire Bloom (79), Christopher McDonald (55), Michael Easton (43), Renee O'Connor (39), Jane Seymour (59) and Sarah Wynter (37)