Friday, April 1, 2011

gravitas \GRAV-uh-tahs\, noun:

• High seriousness (as in a person's bearing or in the treatment of a subject).

Gravitas is from the Latin gravitas, "heaviness, seriousness," from gravis, "heavy, serious."

wikiot

• An fool who believes all information found on Wikipedia is accurate and true.

Michael Scott, from NBC's "The Office", upon claiming "Wikipedia is the best thing ever. Anyone in the world can write anything they want about any subject, so you know you are getting the best possible information." solidified himself among the ranks of wikiots.

Trivia

What was the famous Swiss spaghetti hoax perpetrated in England on BBC on April Fool’s Day in 1957?

• It was a bogus news report that showed a Swiss family harvesting spaghetti from trees while a respected newscaster explained that Switzerland had a bumper crop of pasta thanks to a mild winter and the “virtual disappearance of the spaghetti weevil.”

Holiday

• April Fool's Day

History

• US House of Representatives: achieved a quorum for the first time and elected its first Speaker, Frederick Muhlenberg of Pennsylvania (1789)
• Royal Air Force: branch of the British Armed Forces was formed (1918)
• TIROS-1: the first weather satellite was launched; it took off from Cape Canaveral and was operational for 78 days (1960)
• Apple Inc.: was founded by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak (1976)
• Gmail: Google's web-based email service was launched (2004)

Birthdays

• Sung-Hi Lee (41): actress, model
• William Harvey (1578-1657): physician who explained blood circulation; plus, psychologist Abraham Maslow (1908-1970)
• Jean-Étienne Portalis (1746-1807): lawyer who helped draft the Napoleonic Code
• Otto von Bismarck (1815-1898): first chancellor of the German Empire
• Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943): Romantic composer
• Milan Kundera (82): author, The Unbearable Lightness of Being; plus, writers Jorge Isaacs (1837-1895), Edmond Rostand (1868-1918), Edgar Wallace (1875-1932) and Anne McCaffrey (85)
• Susan Boyle (50): singer who didn't win Britain's Got Talent, but became a star, anyway; also, musicians Rudy Isley (72), Jimmy Cliff (63), Gil Scott-Heron (62), Method Man (40), Bijou Phillips (31) and Hillary Scott (25)
• Barry Sonnenfeld (58): producer/director; also, actors Lon Chaney (1883-1930), Toshiro Mifune (1920-1997), Debbie Reynolds (79), Ali MacGraw (73), David Oyelowo (35), Sam Huntington (29) and Josh Zuckerman (26)