Wednesday, July 21, 2010

occlude \uh-KLOOD\, verb:

1. To shut in, out, or off.

2. Physical Chemistry. (Of certain metals and other solids) to incorporate (gases and other foreign substances), as by absorption or adsorption.

3. Dentistry. To shut or close, with the cusps of the opposing teeth of the upper and lower jaws fitting together.

Occlude owes its popular usage to the dental term occlusion, "the fitting together of the teeth of the lower jaw with the corresponding teeth of the upper jaw when the jaws are closed."

a crapella

• Singing out loud while listening to music with your headphones on. Whereas the singer gets the benefit of the music, those unfortunate to be standing nearby are subjected to an unaccompanied (and invariably crappy) rendition of the song.

"I wish that guy would turn his iPod off - his a crapella version of Bohemian Rhapsody is killing me"

Trivia

What famous philosopher-poet was the first American to successfully combine clay with graphite to create a modern lead pencil?

• Henry David Thoreau, whose father, John, operated a pencil factory.

History

• Temple of Artemis: marble shrine that was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World was burned down by a fame-seeking young man, Herostratus (356 BCE)
• Bull Run: Confederate forces won the first major battle of the Civil War; Confederate general Thomas Jackson acquired his nickname "Stonewall" (1861)
• Scopes Trial: John T. Scopes was found guilty of teaching Darwinism in a Tennessee high school (1925)
• 17th parallel: following defeat at Dien Bien Phu, France agreed to withdraw troops from communist North Vietnam (1954)
• Aswan Dam: was completed, preventing Nile floods and providing electricity and water for Egypt and Sudan (1970)
• WorldCom: filed for bankruptcy about a month after revealing deceptive accounting had inflated profits by nearly $4 billion; it was the largest bankruptcy in US history (2002)

Birthdays

• Jean Picard (1620-1682): astronomer, the first to measure a degree of the Earth's latitude
• Hart Crane (1899-1932): novelist, one of the Lost Generation; plus, authors Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961), John Gardner (1933-1982) and Michael Connelly (54) and Greg Behrendt (47)

• Isaac Stern (1920-2001): violin virtuoso
• Robin Williams (58): hyper and wacky comedian and actor; also, actors Edward Herrmann (67), Art Hindle (62), Jon Lovitz (53), Lance Guest (50), Josh Harnett (32) and Jamie Waylett (21)
• Garry Trudeau (62): creator of Doonesbury and 1st comic strip artist to win a Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning
• Yusuf Islam (62): singer, songwriter, aka Cat Stevens; vocalists Emerson Hart (41), Damian Marley (32) and Blake Lewis (29) share this birth date