Sunday, August 7, 2011

nervure \NUR-vyoor\, noun:

• A vein, as of a leaf or the wing of an insect.

Nervure is French for "rib."

chiptease

• When you buy a bag of chips thinking that it will be full of chips but when you open the bag it's barely full.

I bought a bag of chips out of the vending machine and there was only 5 chips in the bag, what a Chiptease!

Trivia

In the popular Margaret Mitchell novel Gone with the Wind, how many children did Scarlett O’Hara have?

• Three—each with a different husband. The first was a son, Wade; the second, a daughter, Ella; the third, a daughter, Bonnie. The first two children were eliminated from the 1939 movie.

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 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

• Alonso de Ercilla y Zúñiga (1533-1594): soldier and poet, La Araucana
• Mata Hari (1876-1917): dancer/spy
• Louis Leakey (1903-1972): paleoanthropologist
• B.J. Thomas (69): country/pop singer, "Raindrops Keep Fallin' On My Head"; also, musicians Bruce Dickinson (53) and Marcus Roberts (48)
• Garrison Keillor (69): writer/host of A Prairie Home Companion
• David Duchovny (51): actor, The X-Files, Californication; also, performers Stan Freberg (85), Wayne Knight (56), Harold Perrineau (48) and Charlize Theron (36)
• Jimmy Wales (45): founder of Wikipedia
• Sidney Crosby (24): center for Pittsburgh Penguins; runners Abebe Bikila (1932-1973) and Alberto Salazar (53) share this birth date

Read more: http://www.answers.com/

Friday, June 24, 2011

sabbatical \suh-BAT-i-kuhl\, noun:

1. Any extended period of leave from one's customary work, especially for rest, to acquire new skills or training, etc.

adjective:

1. Of or pertaining to or appropriate to the Sabbath.
2. Bringing a period of rest.

Sabbatical originates in reference to the Judeo-Christian Sabbath, and comes from the Greek sabbatikos.
curb shame

• Embarrassment at waiting on the curb obediently as other pedestrians ignore the "don't walk" signal in the absence of traffic.

I couldn't stand the curb shame any longer so I crossed with everyone else, even though I needed a break from running all around town.

Trivia

How does the appearance of the desert-dwelling addax antelope change from summer to winter?

• Its fur changes color—from white in summer to a dark grayish brown in winter. White reflects the heat from the sun, keeping the addax cool. The darker color in winter helps absorb heat from the sun.

History

• dancing mania: first major outbreak of this phenomenon — wild, uncontrollable dancing, accompanied by hallucinations, to the point of exhaustion — occurred in Aachen, Germany (1374)
• John Cabot: explorer became the first European to sight the continent of North America (1497)
• Henry VIII: crowned king of England (1509)
• flying saucer: Kenneth Arnold described UFOs he had seen near Mt. Rainier, Washington, as "saucers skipping across the water" (1947); the Roswell Report closed the case on other alleged sightings of UFOs near Roswell, New Mexico (1997)
• Berlin blockade: Soviet Union prevented delivery of supplies to Berlin; Allied forces began the Berlin airlift in response (1948)
• FTC: required that a message be placed on all cigarette packages to warn consumers that cigarette smoking is dangerous to their health (1964)

Birthdays

• Saint John of the Cross (1542-1591): Carmelite friar, mystic and poet
• Jack Dempsey (1895-1983): heavyweight boxing champ
• Pete Hamill (76): journalist and short-story author; writers Ambrose Bierce (1842-c.1914), Norman Cousins (1915-1990), John Ciardi (1916-1986), Claude Chabrol (1930-2010) and Anita Desai (74) share this birth date
• Mick Fleetwood (64): drummer with Fleetwood Mac; also, musicians John Illsley (62), Danielle Spencer (46), Glenn Medeiros (41) and Solange Knowles (25)
• Minka Kelly (31): actor, Friday Night Lights; also, actors Al Molinaro (92), Michele Lee (69), Georg Stanford Brown (68), Peter Weller (64), Joe Penny (55), Sherry Stringfield (44) and Mindy Kaling (32)
• Lionel Messi (24): FC Barcelona soccer star

 

Read more: http://www.answers.com/

Cthulhu in a jar

I'm trying to figure out how a simple jar can restrain the evil one!