Tuesday, August 9, 2022

gerent \JEER-uhnt\, noun:

• A ruler or manager.

Gerent is an English adaptation of the Latin verb gerere, "to manage or conduct."

 

thinko

• A mental typo, where someone says the wrong word but not because they don't know the correct word.

When he mixed up the names of his two close friends, it was a thinko.

 

Trivia

What was the name of the plane that dropped the atomic bomb on Nagasaki?

• 74 years ago today, the plane Bockscar — named for its regular commander, Frederick Bock — dropped "Fat Man" on the Japanese city of Nagasaki, effectively putting an end to World War II. Three days earlier, the Enola Gay — named for Enola Gay Tibbets, the mother of pilot Paul Tibbets — had unloaded its cargo, "Little Boy," on Hiroshima. The explosions killed more than 200,000 people, and the two cities were nearly completely destroyed. Both cities have been rebuilt and serve as a center of the movement to ban nuclear weapons. An annual world conference opposing nuclear weapons has met in Hiroshima every year since 1955.

History

• Tower of Pisa: construction on the campanile began; it would take 200 years to complete, and the uneven settling of the foundation would cause it to lean (1173)
• Sistine Chapel: the private chapel of the popes was consecrated and its first mass was celebrated (1483)
• Webster-Ashburton Treaty: established much of the border between the US and Canada (1842)
• 1936 Summer Olympics: Jesse Owens became the first American to win four gold medals in one Olympiad (1936)
• Nagasaki: atom bomb called the Fat Man, dropped by the Bockscar, devastated a second Japanese city (1945)
• Singapore: seceded from and became independent of Malaysia (1965)
• Richard M. Nixon: officially left office as America's 37th president and the first one to resign; vice president Gerald Ford became president (1974)

Birthdays

• Isaac Walton 1593
• Jean Piaget 1896
  
• Charles Farrell 1901
• Zino Francescatti 1902
• Roger Shaw 1927
• Merle Kilgore 1934
• Billy Henderson (The Spinners) 1939
• Jack DeJohnette 1942
• David Steinberg 1942
• Sam Elliott 1944
• Ken Norton 1945
• Rinus Gerritsen (Golden Earring) 1946
• Barbara Mason 1947
• Doug Williams 1955
• Benjamin Orr (The Cars) 1955
• Melanie Griffith 1957
• Amanda Bearse 1958
• Kurtis Blow 1959
• Aimee Mann 1960
• Whitney Houston 1963
• Deion Sanders 1967
• Pat Peterson 1968
• Gillian Anderson 1968
• Mack 10 1971
• Liz Vassey 1972
• Arion Salazar (Third Blind Eye) 1972
• Audrey Tautou 1978