Saturday, July 16, 2011

abject \ab-JEKT\, adjective:

1. Utterly hopeless, miserable, humiliating, or wretched.

2. Contemptible; despicable.

Abject translates to the Latin equivalent of "thrown down."

carmageddon

• A state of extreme traffic backup where one becomes so frustrated they feel the world is collapsing around them.

I can't believe I had to sit in traffic for three hours after those semi's crashed. It was carmageddon!

Trivia

What odd-looking mammal is regularly described as a pine cone with legs?

• The pangolin, or scaly anteater, of Asia and Africa. It has also been described as an artichoke with legs.

History

• Czar Nicholas II: ruler of Russia was executed, along with his family, by the Bolsheviks, a year after having abdicated (1918)
• parking meter: was first installed, in Oklahoma City (1935)
• Trinity test: US exploded the first trial atom bomb in the New Mexico desert, less than a month before bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki (1945)
• Catcher in the Rye: J.D. Salinger's novel about adolescent antihero Holden Caulfield was published; it was controversial at the time but is now a staple of school curricula (1951)
• Apollo 11: the first manned flight to the moon took off from the Kennedy Space Center (1969)
• Saddam Hussein: became president of Iraq (1979)
• JFK, Jr.: was killed with wife Carolyn and her sister in a plane crash (1999)

Birthdays

• Joshua Reynolds (1723-1792): portraitist; artists Andrea del Sarto (1486-1530) and Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot (1796-1875) share this birth date
• Mary Baker Eddy (1821-1910): founder of the Christian Science movement
• Roald Amundsen (1872-1928): explorer, first to reach the South Pole
• Trygve Lie (1896-1968): first UN secretary-general
• Pinchas Zukerman (63): violinist and conductor
• Michael Flatley (53): step dancer, Lord of the Dance
• Will Ferrell (44): comedian and actor, SNL, Funny or Die; other actors born on this date include Barbara Stanwyck (1907-1990), Ginger Rogers (1911-1995), Phoebe Cates (48), Corey Feldman (40), AnnaLynne McCord (24) and Mark Indelicato (17)

Read more: http://www.answers.com/