Wednesday, July 25, 2012

Bildungsroman \BIL-doongz-roh-mahn\, noun:

• A type of novel concerned with the education, development, and maturing of a young protagonist.

Bildungsroman stems from the German word of the same spelling. The word bildung means "formation," and the word roman means "book."
Dictionary Inception

• When you look up the meaning of a word and the definition uses a version of the same word.

You: "I wonder how one would define leadership?"
Dictionary: "Leadership: (n) (lee-der-ship) the ability to lead."
You: "Well, that was insightful. Dictionary Inception at it again."
Trivia

Which U.S. interstate highway is the longest?

• I-90, which stretches 3,099 miles from Boston, Massachusetts, to Seattle, Washington.

History

• Caracas: Captain Diego de Losada founded Venezuela's capital, then known as Santiago de Leon de Caracas (1567)
• Henry IV of France: embraced Roman Catholicism for the second time; he had abandoned Protestantism in order to win Paris (1593)
• General of the Army: Ulysses S. Grant became the first officer to hold the US army's highest rank (1866)
• Bikini Atoll: America tested the first underwater atomic bomb (1946)
• test-tube baby: Louise Joy Brown, the first baby conceived by in vitro fertilization, was born in Oldham, England (1978)
• Israel-Jordan Treaty of Peace: at the White House, Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin and Jordan's King Hussein agreed to end their official state of war (1994)

Birthdays

• Thomas Eakins 1844
• Morris Raphel Cohen 1880
• Walter Brennan 1894
• Eric Hoffer 1902
• Jack Gilford 1907
• Estelle Getty 1924
• Stanley Dancer 1927
• Don Ellis 1934
• Barbara Harris 1935
• John Pennel 1940
• Manuel Charlton (Nazareth) 1941
• Janet Margolin 1943
• Jim McCarty (Yardbirds) 1943
• Donna Theodore 1945
• Verdine White (Earth, Wind & Fire) 1951
• Walter Payton (NFL) 1954
• Iman 1955
• Ray Billingsley 1957
• Thurston Moore (Sonic Youth) 1958
• Marty Brown 1965
• Illeana Douglas 1965
• Matt LeBlanc 1967 - Actor ("Friends")
• Brad Renfro 1982