TGIF! July 26, 2013

boniface \BON-uh-feys, -fis\, noun:

1. any landlord or innkeeper. 
2. Saint (Wynfrith), a.d. 680?–755?, English monk who became a missionary in Germany. 
3. a jovial innkeeper in George Farquhar's The Beaux' Stratagem. 
4. a male given name: from a Latin word meaning “doer of good.” 

Boniface literally translates to "doer of good" in Latin. The generalized meaning of innkeeper came from the 1707 play The Beaux' Stratagem by George Farquhar in which a jovial innkeeper is named Boniface.
lane splitting

• Riding a motorcycle between two traffic lanes between cars. 

There were a ton of cars on the roads during rush hour, so I started lane splitting to get ahead of the traffic.
Trivia

What motivated Minnesota factory worker Charles Strite to invent the automatic pop-up toaster in 1919?

• He couldn’t stand the burned toast regularly served in his company cafeteria. Strite’s invention, which browned a single piece of bread on both sides, had a variable timer that turned off the electricity and triggered a spring that ejected the toasted bread.

History

• Lionel Nathan Rothschild: became the first Jew to sit in the British Parliament — 11 years after he was elected; the House of Commons had to allow a special oath (1858)
• Unua Libro: the "First Book" of Esperanto was published, by Dr. L.L. Zamenhof (1887)
• National Security Act: was signed by US President Harry S Truman; it created the Department of Defense, National Security Council, Central Intelligence Agency, and Joint Chiefs of Staff (1947)
• Suez Canal: was nationalized by Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser, leading to an international crisis (1956)
• Jimmy Hoffa: Teamsters union head was convicted of fraud and conspiracy (1964)

Birthdays

• George Catlin 1796
• George Bernard Shaw 1856
• Carl Jung 1875
• Aldous Huxley 1894
• Gracie Allen 1906
• Vivian Vance 1912
• Erskine Hawkins 1914
• Marjorie Lord 1921
• Blake Edwards 1922
• Jason Robards, Jr. 1922
• Hoyt Wilhelm 1923
• Louie Bellson (Duke Ellington Band) 1924
• James Best 1926
• Stanley Kubrick 1928
• Bobby Lilly 1939
• Bobby Rousseau 1940
• Bobby Hebb 1941
• Dobie Gray 1943
• Peter Hyams 1943
• Mick Jagger (Rolling Stones) 1943
• Keil Martin 1944
• Mickei King 1944
• Helen Mirren 1946
• Roger Taylor (Queen) 1949
• Susan George 1950
• Duncan Mackey 1950
• Dorothy Hamill 1956
• Kevin Spacey 1959
• Gary Cherone (Extreme, Van Halen) 1961
• Sandra Bullock 1964
• Jeremy Piven 1965
• Jennifer Ashe 1966
• Kate Beckinsale 1973
• Derek Jeter 1974
• Taylor Momsen 1993