Sunday, April 3, 2011

abstemious \ab-STEE-mee-uhs\, adjective:

1. Sparing in eating and drinking; temperate; abstinent.

2. Sparingly used or consumed; used with temperance or moderation.

3. Marked by or spent in abstinence.

Abstemious comes from Latin abstemius, from ab-, abs-, "away from" + the root of temetum, "intoxicating drink."

spoiler alert

• Usu. a term to describe when crucial elements of a movie are about to be revealed (i.e. the ending, character deaths, a twist, etc.)

**Spoiler Alert!**

The girl in million dollar baby dies.

Trivia

Which three countries share the southeast Asian island of Borneo?

• Indonesia, Malaysia, and Brunei. Borneo is the third-largest island in the world.

History

• Jesse James: outlaw met his end, shot in the back by Robert Ford, a member of his own gang (1882)
• Marshall Plan: President Truman signed over some $13 billion in aid for post-war Europe (1948)
• TV Guide: was published for the first time, with the infant Desi Arnaz, Jr., on the cover (1953)
• Super Outbreak: the largest spate of deadly tornadoes to hit the US began; 148 tornadoes rampaged across 13 states (1974)
• Unabomber: mail-order anti-technology terrorist Theodore Kaczynski was arrested in his cabin outside Lincoln, Montana (1996)
• iPad: Apple's version of a touch-screen tablet PC was first released (2010)

Birthdays

• Pierre-Fidele Bretonneau (1778-1862): epidemiologist who performed the first successful tracheotomy
• Washington Irving (1783-1859): author, "Rip Van Winkle"
• Gus Grissom (1926-1967): astronaut who, along with Roger Chaffee and Ed White, was killed in the Apollo 1 fire
• Helmut Kohl (81): former German chancellor; and, Italian PM Alcide De Gasperi (1881-1954)
• Jane Goodall (77): primatologist, conservationist
• Wayne Newton (69): Las Vegas singer, "Danke Schoen"; plus, musicians Tony Orlando (67), John Mooney (56), Sebastian Bach (42) and Leona Lewis (26)
• Alec Baldwin (53): 30 Rock's Jack Donaghy: also, actors Doris Day (87), Marlon Brando (1924-2004), Eric Braeden (70), Marsha Mason (69), David Hyde Pierce (52), Eddie Murphy (50), Jennie Garth (39) and Amanda Bynes (25)