Wednesday, August 7, 2013

quillet \KWIL-it\, noun:

• a subtlety or quibble.

Quillet is related to the word quiddity meaning "a trifling nicety."

Gypsy 

• Descendant of the original Indian travellers who arrived in Western Europe after the downfall of the Byzantine empire in the 15th Century. The called themselves the 'Lords of Little Egypt' which contracted to Egyptians, Gyptians and eventually Gypsies or Gyppos. Little Egypt was the name given to the area we now call Turkey. 

My mother said 

I never should 

play with the 

Gypsies in the wood 

Trivia
What is the only North American mammal with a prehensile tail?

• The opossum. It uses its hairless foot-long tail to grasp objects and climb trees.

History

• Purple Heart: the military decoration was instituted by George Washington (1782)
• Ulysses: a US appeals court ruled that the James Joyce novel was not obscene and therefore should not be banned (1934)
• Kon-Tiki: the balsa wood raft made it across the Pacific, crashing at the end on a reef in the Tuomotu Islands; this demonstrated that pre-Columbian South Americans could have reached and settled Polynesia (1947)
• Gulf of Tonkin resolution: US Congress authorized President Lyndon B. Johnson to use military force in Vietnam (1964)
• Lynne Cox: swims the frigid Bering Strait, becoming the first person to swim from the US to the to the Soviet Union (1987)
• Twin Towers: Philippe Petit walked a tightrope between the towers of New York's World Trade Center (1974)
• US embassy bombings: simultaneous al-Qaeda attacks in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, killed over 200 people and wounded thousands (1998)

Birthdays

• Nathaniel Greene 1742
• Mata Hari 1876
• Billie Burke 1884
• Rudolf Bunche 1904
• Warren Covington 1921
• Felice Bryant 1925
• Stan Freberg 1926
• "The Amazing" James Randi 1928
• Magic Slim 1937
• Ron Holden 1939
• Verna Bloom 1939
• B.J. Thomas 1942
• Garrison Keillor 1942
• Lana Cantrell 1943
• John Glover 1944
• David Rasche 1944
• Rodney Crowell 1950
• Andy Fraser (Free) 1952
• Caroline Aaron 1952
• Wayne Knight 1955
• Alberto Salazar 1958
• Bruce Dickinson (Iron Maiden) 1958
• David Duchovny 1960
• DeLane Matthews 1961
• Marcus Roberts 1963
• Harold Perrineau 1963 - Actor ("Lost") 
• Raul Malo (The Mavericks) 1965
• Charlotte Lewis 1967
• Sydney Penny 1971
• Charlize Theron 1975
• Sydney Crosby 1987