Saturday, March 19, 2011

interregnum \in-tuhr-REG-nuhm\, noun;

plural interregnums \-nuhmz\ or interregna \-nuh\:

1. The interval between two reigns; any period when a state is left without a ruler.

2. A period of freedom from authority or during which government functions are suspended.

3. Any breach of continuity in an order; a lapse or interval in a continuity.

Interregnum is from the Latin, from inter, "between" + regnum, "dominion, reign, rule," from rex, "king."

Concert Hangover

• The feeling of grogginess and/or deafness after attending a loud concert.

"Wow, I had a lot of fun at that Boys Like Girls concert last night."

"Me too, but now I have a terrible concert hangover."

Trivia

What are you afraid of if you have catoptrophobia?

• Mirrors.

History

• bank robbery: the first recorded bank heist took place in NYC; Edward Smith escaped with some $245,000, but was later caught and imprisoned (1831)
• SS Georgiana: Confederate ship was wrecked (1863); it was discovered on the same date in 1965 by underwater archeologist E. Lee Spence in his teenage years
• 25th Academy Awards: was the first televised Oscar ceremony (1953)
• Sarajevo: became a reunited city after four years when the Serbs were ousted by the Moslem-Croatians
• invasion of Iraq: began (on March 20 local time in Iraq, 2003)
• GRB 080319B: gamma-ray burst was detected, thus setting a record for farthest object that could be seen by the naked eye (2008)

Birthdays

• Vida Guerra (37): bootay model
• David Livingstone (1813-1873): missionary and explorer; and, explorer Sir Richard Burton (1821-1890)
• Wyatt Earp (1848-1929): frontier lawman and gambler
• William Jennings Bryan (1860-1925): politician and orator who was the prosecutor in the Scopes trial
• Earl Warren (1891-1974): 14th Chief Justice of the US; plus, jurist John Sirica (1904-1992)
• Philip Roth (78): Pulitzer Prize winner for American Pastoral; plus, writer Nikolay Gogol (1809-1852 OS)
• Harvey Weinstein (58): producer and co-founder of Miramax
• Bruce Willis (56): actor, Die Hard; also, actors Patrick McGoohan (1928-2008), Ursula Andress (75), Glenn Close (64), Abby Brammell (32) and Craig Lamar Traylor (22)