Thursday, March 24, 2011

kismet \KIZ-met; -mit\, noun:

• Destiny; fate.

Kismet comes (via Turkish) from Arabic qismah, "portion, lot."

Christmas Syndrome

• When you are looking forward to something constantly, to the point of obsession, causing the actual event to seem short and dull in comparison.

Oh, he's been counting down the days since July, and has came down with a bad case of Christmas Syndrome.

Trivia

Who was the first jazz musician to win a Pulitzer Prize?

• Wynton Marsalis, in 1997, for Blood on the Fields, his epic jazz oratorio on American slavery. His Pulitzer was the first awarded for a non-classical composition.

History

• bacteria: Robert Koch announced his discovery of the bacillus that causes tuberculosis (1882)
• Cat on a Hot Tin Roof: play by Tennessee Williams opened on Broadway (1955)
• Elvis Presley: the King of Rock 'N Roll joined the US army for two years (1958)
• Dark Side of the Moon: Pink Floyd released one of the best-selling albums of all time (1973)
• Exxon Valdez oil spill: tanker ran aground in Prince William Sound, causing the worst maritime environmental disaster in history (1989)
• Yugoslavia: NATO began air strikes in response to ethnic cleansing by Serbs of Albanians in Kosovo (1999)

Birthdays

• Georgius Agricola (1494-1555): father of mineralogy; plus, geologist and ethnologist John Wesley Powell (1834-1902)
• Harry Houdini (1874-1926): master escape artist
• Steve McQueen (1930-1980): super-cool actor, The Great Escape, Bullitt; other actors born today include Robert Carradine (57), Annabella Sciorra (47), Lara Flynn Boyle (41), Jim Parsons (38), Alyson Hannigan (37) and Keisha Castle-Hughes (21)
• Dario Fo (85): Nobel Prize-winning playwright
• Tommy Hilfiger (60): fashion designer; designers William Morris (1834-1896) and Bob Mackie (71) were also born on this date
• Star Jones Reynolds (49): lawyer, host of The View
• Sharon Corr (41): rocker, The Corrs
• Peyton Manning (35): four-time NFL MVP