Sunday, July 16, 2017

abject \ab-JEKT\, adjective:

1. Utterly hopeless, miserable, humiliating, or wretched.

2. Contemptible; despicable.

Abject translates to the Latin equivalent of "thrown down."

 

carmageddon

• A state of extreme traffic backup where one becomes so frustrated they feel the world is collapsing around them.

I can't believe I had to sit in traffic for three hours after those semi's crashed. It was carmageddon!

History

• Czar Nicholas II: ruler of Russia was executed, along with his family, by the Bolsheviks, a year after having abdicated (1918)

  
• parking meter: was first installed, in Oklahoma City (1935)
• Trinity test: US exploded the first trial atom bomb in the New Mexico desert, less than a month before bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki (1945)
• Catcher in the Rye: J.D. Salinger's novel about adolescent antihero Holden Caulfield was published; it was controversial at the time but is now a staple of school curricula (1951)
• Apollo 11: the first manned flight to the moon took off from the Kennedy Space Center (1969)
• Saddam Hussein: became president of Iraq (1979)
• JFK, Jr.: died with wife Carolyn and her sister in a plane crash (1999)

Birthdays

• Sir Joshua Reynolds 1723
• Mary Baker Eddy 1821
• Ida Bell Wells 1862
• Roald Amundsen 1872
• Trygve Lie 1896
• Barbara Stanwyck 1907
• Orville Redenbacher 1907
  
• Ginger Rogers 1911
• Barnard Hughes 1915
• Bess Myerson 1924
• Nat Pierce 1925
• Cal Tjader 1925
• Joey Giardello 1930
• William Bell 1939
• Corin Redgrave 1939
• Tony Jackson (Searchers) 1940
• Desmond Dekker 1942
• Margaret Court 1942
• Jimmy Johnson (NFL) 1943
• Ruben Blades 1948
• Pinchas Zukerman 1948
• Stewart Copeland (Police) 1952
• Michael Flatley 1958
• Phoebe Cates 1963
• Will Ferrell 1967
• Barry Sanders 1968
• Ed Kowalczyk (Live) 1971
• Corey Scott Feldman 1971