Saturday, April 25, 2015

somnolent \SOM-nuh-luhnt\, adjective:

1. Sleepy; drowsy; inclined to sleep.
2. Tending to cause sleepiness or drowsiness.

Somnolent is from Latin somnolentus, from somnus, "sleep." A related word is insomnia (in-, "not" + somnus).

 

Twatted

• The past tense of "tweeting" on Twitter.

Meridith Vieira: "Oh, do you Twitter? Tweet?" 
Stephen Colbert: "I have twatted." 
Meridith Vieira: "Actually, so have I."

Holiday

• World Penguin Day

History

• guillotine: highwayman Nicolas Jacques Pelletier was beheaded in France's first public execution-by-guillotine (1792)
• Suez Canal: ground was broken on the waterway connecting the Mediterranean Sea and Red Sea (1859)
• license plates: were required on cars in New York State — the first time in the US (1901)
• United Nations: delegates met in San Francisco to organize the international body (1945)
• double helix: in the magazine Nature, Francis Crick and James D. Watson published their "Molecular structure of nucleic acids: a structure for deoxyribose nucleic acid," which described the structure of DNA (1953)

Birthdays

• Oliver Cromwell 1599 - English military and political leader
• Guglielmo Marconi 1874 - Italian inventor (radio telegraph system)
• Edward R. Murrow 1908 - American broadcast journalist
• Earl Bostic 1913 - Musician
• Sal Franzella 1915 - Musician
• Jerry Barber 1916 - Golfer
• Ella Fitzgerald 1918 - Vocalist, known as "First Lady of Song" and "Lady Ella"
• Robert Q. Lewis 1920 - Radio and television personality, game show host, actor
• Albert King 1923 - Musician
• Anita Bjorak 1923 - Actress
• Melissa Hayden 1923 - Dancer
• Vassar Clements 1928 - Musician
• Paul Mazursky 1930 - Actor, director
• Willis "Gator" Jackson 1932 - Saxaphonist
• Meadowlark Lemon 1932 - Basketball player, Harlem Globetrotters
• Jerry Leiber 1933 - Songwriter
• Anthony Lukas 1933 - Journalist, author
• Al Pacino 1940 - Actor
• Stu Cook 1945 - Musician (CCR)
• Bjorn Ulvaeus 1945 - Musician (Abba)
• Talia Shire 1946 - Actress ("The Godfather", "Rocky" film series)
• Jeffrey De Munn 1947 - Actor ("The Green Mile", "The Shawshank Redemption")
• Michael Brown 1949 - Musician (The Left Banke)
• Hank Azaria 1964 - Actor
• Andy Bell 1964 - Musician (Erasure)
• James Barbour 1965 - Actor, singer ("A Tale of Two Cities")
• Eric Avery 1965 - Musician (Jane's Addiction)
• Jane Clayson 1967 - Television host, journalist, author
• Renée Zellweger 1969 - Actress
• Jason Lee 1970 - Actor ("My Name is Earl")
• Emily Bergl 1975 - Actress ("The Rage: Carrie 2")
• Tim Duncan 1976 - Basketball player
• Sara Paxton 1988 - Actress