Monday, August 9, 2010

gerent \JEER-uhnt\, noun:

• A ruler or manager.

Gerent is an English adaptation of the Latin verb gerere, "to manage or conduct."

thinko

• A mental typo, where someone says the wrong word but not because they don't know the correct word.

When he mixed up the names of his two close friends, it was a thinko.

Trivia

What was the name of the plane that dropped the atomic bomb on Nagasaki?

• Sixty-five years ago today, the plane Bockscar — named for its regular commander, Frederick Bock — dropped "Fat Man" on the Japanese city of Nagasaki, effectively putting an end to World War II. Three days earlier, the Enola Gay — named for Enola Gay Tibbets, the mother of pilot Paul Tibbets — had unloaded its cargo, "Little Boy," on Hiroshima. The explosions killed more than 200,000 people, and the two cities were nearly completely destroyed. Both cities have been rebuilt and serve as a center of the movement to ban nuclear weapons. An annual world conference opposing nuclear weapons has met in Hiroshima every year since 1955.

History

• Tower of Pisa: construction on the campanile began; it would take 200 years to complete, and the uneven settling of the foundation would cause it to lean (1173)
• Sistine Chapel: the private chapel of the popes was consecrated and its first mass was celebrated (1483)
• Webster-Ashburton Treaty: established much of the border between the US and Canada (1842)
• 1936 Summer Olympics: Jesse Owens became the first American to win four gold medals in one Olympiad (1936)
• Singapore: seceded from and became independent of Malaysia (1965)
• Richard M. Nixon: officially left office as America's 37th president and the first one to resign; vice president Gerald Ford became president (1974)

Birthdays

• Jean Piaget (1896-1980): specialist in developmental psychology
• P.L. Travers (1899-1996): author, Mary Poppins; plus, writers Izaak Walton (1593-1683), John Dryden (1631 [O.S.]-1700), Gaston Paris (1839-1903) and Philip Larkin (1922-1985)
• Rod Laver (72): tennis great; athletes Ralph Houk (91), Bob Cousy (82), Ken Norton (67), Brett Hull (46), Deion Sanders (43) and Chamique Holdsclaw (33) were also born on this date
• Eric Bana (42): time-traveler Henry DeTamble in The Time Traveler's Wife; also, actors Robert Shaw (1927-1978), David Steinberg (68), Sam Elliott (66), Melanie Griffith (53), Amanda Bearse (52), Whitney Houston (47), Gillian Anderson (42), Jessica Capshaw (34) and Audrey Tatou (32)