Monday, August 29, 2011

flounce \FLOUNS\, verb:

• To go with impatient, exaggerated movements.

noun:

• A strip of material gathered or pleated and attached at one edge, with the other edge left loose or hanging

verb:

• To throw the body about spasmodically.

Flounce may have emerged from the Scandinavian flunsa, "to plunge, hurry," but the first record of these is 200 years later than the English word. The English bounce may be an influence.

package stalking

• When one constantly presses the refresh button on an online package tracking website to know up to the minute info on his or her package's delivery

Sorry I forgot to call you on your birthday mom. I fell asleep package stalking my sham-wow

Trivia

Why were American women asked to stop buying corsets during World War I?

• To make the steel that would have been used for corset stays available for shipbuilding. Their cooperation freed up 28,000 tons of steel which were used to build two warships.

History

• Atahualpa: last sovereign Incan emperor was garroted by Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizzaro, who thus defeated the Incan Empire and conquered Peru (1533)
• Royal George: some 900 drowned when the ship sank at port; the event was immortalized in William Cowper's "On the Loss of the Royal George" (1782)
• Shay's Rebellion: uprising began in Massachusetts, led by Revolutionary War captain Daniel Shays; farmers were protesting crushing debt and taxes (1786)
• Treaty of Nanking: marked the end of the First Opium War and the ceding of Hong Kong Island to Britain (1842)
• The Beatles: gave their last paid concert, at San Francisco's Candlestick Park, now Monster Park (1966)
• Hurricane Katrina: the costliest natural disaster in US history made landfall in Louisiana and Mississippi, devastating cities, most notably New Orleans (2005)

Birthdays

• John Locke (1632-1704): English empiricist philosopher who influenced the American and French revolutions
• Maurice Maeterlinck (1862-1949): Nobel Prize-winning author; plus, writer Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-1894)
• Ingrid Bergman (1915-1982): Oscar-, Emmy- and Tony-award winning actress; and, actors Elliot Gould (73), G.W. Bailey (66), Ray Wise (64), Rebecca DeMornay (49?), Carla Gugino (40), Dante Basco (36) and Lea Michele (25)
• Richard Attenborough (88): director of Gandhi and Cry Freedom; also, directors Preston Sturges (1898-1959), William Friedkin (76) and Joel Schumacher (72)
• John McCain (75): US senator from Arizona
• Michael Jackson (1958-2009): pop megastar; plus, musicians Charlie Parker (1920-1955) and Dinah Washington (1924-1963)

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