Wednesday, March 24, 2010

defenestrate \dee-FEN-uh-strayt\, transitive verb:

• To throw out of a window.

Defenestrate is derived from Latin de-, "out of" + fenestra, "window." The noun form is defenestration.

BFD

• Big Fucking Deal

Matt: Oh! LOOK! Theres Vice-President Biden!
Sarah: BFD!
Trivia
What image remake did Uncle Ben—long the face of Uncle Ben’s rice—undergo in 2007?

• After 61 years, he became chairman of the board in company ads.

History

• Cat on a Hot Tin Roof: play by Tennessee Williams opened on Broadway (1955)
• Dark Side of the Moon: Pink Floyd released one of the best-selling albums of all time (1973)
• Exxon Valdez oil spill: tanker ran aground in Prince William Sound, causing the worst maritime environmental disaster in history (1989)
• Yugoslavia: NATO began air strikes in response to ethnic cleansing by Serbs of Albanians in Kosovo (1999)

Birthdays

• Georgius Agricola (1494-1555): father of mineralogy; plus, geologist and ethnologist John Wesley Powell (1834-1902)
• Harry Houdini (1874-1926): master escape artist
• Steve McQueen (1930-1980): super-cool actor, The Great Escape, Bullitt; other actors born today include Robert Carradine (56), Annabella Sciorra (46), Lara Flynn Boyle (40), Jim Parsons (37), Alyson Hannigan (36) and Keisha Castle-Hughes (20)
• Dario Fo (84): Nobel Prize-winning playwright
• Tommy Hilfiger (59): fashion designer; designers William Morris (1834-1896) and Bob Mackie (70) were also born on this date
• Star Jones Reynolds (48): lawyer, host of The View
• Sharon Corr (40): rocker, The Corrs
• Peyton Manning (34): four-time NFL MVP