Monday, June 28, 2010

yen \YEN\, noun:

1. A desire or craving.

2. An aluminum coin and monetary unit of Japan, equal to 100 sen or 1000 rin.

verb:

1. To have a craving; yearn.

The use of yen to signify a desire, as opposed to Japanese currency, is an Americanism that probably derives from Chinese dialect, yáhn or yin, "craving."

get at me

• Short for "Get back to me" or "Get back at me", meaning "respond", or "reply".

"Mike, I hope you get this email in time. We are changing the plans from Friday to Saturday. Get at me and let me know if you can still make it."

Trivia

In the world of sports, what is sabermetrics?

• It’s the statistical analysis of baseball data. The word is an acronym of sorts for the Society for American Baseball Research, the organization behind the numbers crunching.

History

• Ned Kelly: Australian bushranger was captured at Glenrowan; he was later hanged for murder (1880)
• Franz Ferdinand: archduke and heir to the Austrian throne was assassinated, along with his wife, in Sarajevo by a Serbian; the event precipitated WWI (1914)
• Treaty of Versailles: was signed, ending WWI (1919)
• Stonewall riots: patrons of a Greenwich Village bar resisted a police raid, sparking the gay pride movement (1969)
• Mike Tyson: boxer bit Evander Holyfield's ear during a heavyweight title fight; he lost the match and gained a 16-month suspension (1997)
• Elian González: was returned to his father in Cuba (2000)
• Slobodan Milosevic: former Yugoslavian leader was turned over to the UN war crimes tribunal (2001)
• Iraqi Interim Government: took power after US handover (2004)

Berfdays, yo!

• Henry VIII (1491-1547): England's king who had six wives
• Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640): Flemish Baroque painter
• Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778): political philosopher and writer
• Richard Rodgers (1902-1979): composer of the Broadway musicals Oklahoma! and The Sound of Music; playwrights Luigi Pirandello (1867-1936) and Mel Brooks (84) share this birth date
• John Elway (50): the only quarterback to have started in five Super Bowls
• John Cusack (44): actor appearing most recently in 2012, and as the voice of Igor in the eponymous animated film; also, actors Pat Morita (1932-2005), Türkan Soray (65), Bruce Davison (64), Gilda Radner (1946-1989), Kathy Bates (62), Alice Krige (56), Mary Stuart Masterson (44), Gil Bellows (43), Tichina Arnold (39) and Alessandro Nivola (38)