Thursday, July 21, 2011

detente \dey-TAHNT\, noun:

• A relaxing of tension, especially between nations.

Detente borrows from the French word that means "a loosening," related to an Old French word for the catch of a crossbow.

cinephile

• A film or movie enthusiast.

A lot of cinephiles enjoy Pulp Fiction.

Trivia

Members of what major league baseball team were once issued Bermuda shorts and knee socks to wear on hot summer days?

• The Chicago White Sox, in August 1976. Owner Bill Veeck’s wife designed the uniform, which the embarrassed players wore only once.

History

• Temple of Artemis: marble shrine that was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World was burned down by a fame-seeking young man, Herostratus (356 BCE)
• Bull Run: Confederate forces won the first major battle of the Civil War; Confederate general Thomas Jackson acquired his nickname "Stonewall" (1861)
• Scopes Trial: John T. Scopes was found guilty of teaching Darwinism in a Tennessee high school (1925)
• 17th parallel: following defeat at Dien Bien Phu, France agreed to withdraw troops from communist North Vietnam (1954)
• Aswan Dam: was completed, preventing Nile floods and providing electricity and water for Egypt and Sudan (1970)
• WorldCom: filed for bankruptcy about a month after revealing deceptive accounting had inflated profits by nearly $4 billion; it was the largest bankruptcy in US history (2002)

Birthdays

• Jean Picard (1620-1682): astronomer, the first to measure a degree of the Earth's latitude
• Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961): novelist, one of the Lost Generation; plus, writers Hart Crane (1899-1932), John Gardner (1933-1982), Michael Connelly (55) and Greg Behrendt (48)
• Isaac Stern (1920-2001): violin virtuoso
• Robin Williams (59): hyper and wacky comedian and actor; also, actors Edward Herrmann (68), Art Hindle (63), Jon Lovitz (54), Lance Guest (51), Josh Harnett (33) and Jamie Waylett (22)
• Garry Trudeau (63): creator of Doonesbury and 1st comic strip artist to win a Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning
• Yusuf Islam (63): singer, songwriter, aka Cat Stevens; vocalists Emerson Hart (42), Damian Marley (33) and Blake Lewis (30) share this birth date

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