Sunday, July 25, 2010

don \DON\, verb:

1. To put on or dress in.

noun:

1. A Spanish title prefixed to a man's given name.

2. (In the Mafia) a head of a family or syndicate.

Don is an early 14th Century contraction of "do on," as doff is a similar contraction of "do off."

solitaire denial

• Flipping through the deck over and over while playing the card game Solitaire even though there are no more moves available, denying that you have lost even though you already know it.

Guy #1: Dude, you've gone through the deck 3 times already. Give it up, you've lost.

Guy #2: ...So I have. I'm in solitaire denial again.

Trivia

What famous fashion designer posed nude in ads for his men’s cologne?

• Yves Saint Laurent, in 1971. He wore only his trademark thick black-framed glasses in print ads for the fragrance YSL Pour Homme.

History

• Caracas: Captain Diego de Losada founded Venezuela's capital, then known as Santiago de Leon de Caracas (1567)
• Henry IV of France: embraced Roman Catholicism for the second time; he had abandoned Protestantism in order to win Paris (1593)
• General of the Army: Ulysses S. Grant became the first officer to hold the US army's highest rank (1866)
• Bikini Atoll: America tested the first underwater atomic bomb (1946)
• test-tube baby: Louise Joy Brown, the first baby conceived by in vitro fertilization, was born in Oldham, England (1978)
• Israel-Jordan Treaty of Peace: at the White House, Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin and Jordan's King Hussein agreed to end their official state of war (1994)

Birthdays

• Thomas Eakins (1844-1916): painter, photographer, sculptor; plus, artist Maxfield Parrish (1870-1966)
• Arthur James Balfour (1848-1930): British prime minister and foreign secretary who authored the Balfour Declaration

• Elias Canetti (1905-1994): Bulgarian novelist and playwright
• Robert Zoellick (57): president of the World Bank
• Katherine Kelly Lang (49): The Bold and the Beautiful's troubled and complex Brooke Logan; also, actors Estelle Getty (1923-2008), Barbara Harris (75), Iman (55), Bobbie Eakes (49), Ileana Douglas (45), Matt LeBlanc (43), DB Woodside (41), Brad Renfro (1982-2008) and James Lafferty (25)
• Billy Wagner (39): closer for the Mets; basketball hall-of-famer Nate Thurmond (69) shares this birthday