Sunday, December 21, 2014

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apocryphal \ uh-POK-ruh-fuhl \ , adjective; 

1. of doubtful authorship or authenticity. 
2. Ecclesiastical . a. ( initial capital letter ) of or pertaining to the Apocrypha. b. of doubtful sanction; uncanonical. 
3. false; spurious: He told an apocryphal story about the sword, but the truth was later revealed . 

Origin: Apocryphal is derived from the Greek term apókryphos meaning "hidden, unknown, spurious." Apocrypha was the name of a group of 14 books originally included in some versions of the Old Testament that were excluded from the Sacred Canon at Reformation for their disputed authenticity. Apocryphal entered English in the late 1500s. 

Gift Parasite

• A person who adds their name to a gift tag in order to claim partial credit for giving the gift.

I'm totally broke so I had to be a gift parasite and sign on that present you're giving Grandma.

History

• Pilgrims: arrived in the New World, seeking religious freedom; they went ashore near Plymouth Rock, having traveled west after their initial settlement in Leiden, Holland, became unsustainable (1620)
• radium: radioactive element was discovered by Marie and Pierre Curie (1898)
• crossword puzzle: Liverpudlian journalist Arthur Wynne published the first "word-cross" puzzle, in The New York World (1913)
• Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs: film version premiered in Hollywood (1937)
• Pan Am Flight 103: went down over Lockerbie, Scotland, after a terrorist bomb exploded aboard, killing all 259 people on the plane and 11 on the ground (1988)

Birthdays

• Jean Baptiste Racine 1639
• Benjamin Disraeli 1804
• Henrietta Szold 1860

• Joseph Stalin (Dzhugashvili) 1879 (Obama's Idol)
• Walter Hagen 1892
• Pat Weaver 1908
• Andor Foldes 1913
• Heinrich Böll 1917
• Kurt Waldheim 1918
• Alicia Alonso 1921
• Paul Winchell 1922
• Phyliss Love 1925
• Ed Nelson 1928
• Freddie Hart 1933
• Phil Donahue 1935
• John Avildsen 1935
• Jane Fonda 1937
• Frank Zappa 1940
• Ray Hildebrand 1940
• Carla Thomas 1942
• Albert Lee 1943
• Gwen McCrae 1943
• Jared Martin 1943
• Michael Tilson Thomas 1944
• Gordon Kannegiesser 1945
• Josh Mostel 1946
• Carl Wilson (The Beach Boys) 1946
• Nate Wright 1947
• Elliott Maddox 1947

• Samuel L. Jackson 1948
• Claude Chartre 1949
• Betty Wright 1953
• Chris Evert 1954
• Jane Kaczmarek 1955
• Jim Rose 1956
• Lee Roy Parnell 1956
• Ray Romano 1957
• Florence Griffith Joyner 1959
• Christy Forester (The Forester Sisters) 1962

• Andy Dick 1965
• Gabrielle Glaser (Luscious Jackson) 1965
• Kiefer Sutherland 1966
• Khrystyne Haje 1968
• Brad Warren (The Warren Brothers) 1968
• Julie Delpy 1969
• Brett Scallions (Fuel) 1971  
• Wendy "Four" "Fiore" Combattante 1983