Tuesday, February 26, 2013

paraph \PAR-uhf\, noun:

• a flourish made after a signature, as in a document, originally as a precaution against forgery.

Though early incarnations of paraph appear in Italian, Middle French, and Middle English, its earliest origins are Greek with para- meaning "beside" and the final -ph resulting from graphos, referring to text.

psychic

• A person with a supernatural talent for finding money.

Person A: She removed my hex!

Person B: No, she removed $50 from your wallet for a stupid rock. She's a psychic!

Trivia
Which current U.S. Supreme Court justice was shown holding a gavel and wearing a judge’s black robe in a high-school yearbook photo?

• Justice Elena Kagan, who joined the high court in 2010. In the 1977 photo the future jurist, then an eighth-grader, was pictured with other members of the student government at New York City’s Hunter College High School.

History

• Bank of England: issued the first one-pound note after the government forbade paying out from the diminished gold reserves (1797)
• Grand Canyon: the enormous gorge was established as a national park (1919); Grand Teton National Park was established on the same date in 1926
• World Trade Center: bomb in basement killed 6, injured more than 1,000 and caused serious structural damage (1993)

Birthdays

• Nicolas Joseph Cugnot 1725 - Inventor
• Victor Hugo 1802 - Author
• Honore Daumier 1808
• Levi Strauss 1829
• William "Buffalo Bill" Cody 1846 - Frontiersman, showman
• John Harvey Kellogg 1852
• Herbert Henry Dow 1866
• William Frawley 1887
• Jean Vercors 1902
• Madeleine Carroll 1906
• Jackie Gleason 1916
• Mason Adams 1919
• Tony Randall 1920
• Betty Hutton 1921
• Margaret Leighton 1922
• Fats Domino 1928 - Musician
• Johnny Cash 1932 - Musician
• Bill Duke 1943
• Paul Cotton (Poco) 1943
• Mitch Ryder 1945 - Singer
• Bob "The Bear" Hite 1945 - Musician (Canned Heat)
• Sandie Shaw (Sandra Goodrich) 1947 - Singer
• Priscilla Lopez 1948
• Jonathan Cain 1950 - Musician (Babys, Journey)
• Michael Bolton 1953 - Singer
• Greg Germann 1958 - Actor ("Ally McBeal")
• John McDaniel 1961
• John Jon 1961 - Musician (Bronski Beat)
• Jennifer Grant 1966
• Suzi Simpson 1968 - playmate from Athens, Greece (Jan, 1992)
• Erykah Badu 1971 - Singer
• Rico Wade (Society of Soul) 1972
• Marshall Faulk 1972 - Football player
• Mark DeRosa 1975 - Baseball player