Saturday, April 25, 2021

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."

 

(_*_)

• emoticon asshole symbol

sometimes u are such an (_*_)

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

 

 

 

 
 

Saturday, April 24, 2021

gainsay \gayn-SAY; GAYN-say\, transitive verb:

1. To deny or dispute; to declare false or invalid.
2. To oppose; to contradict.

Gainsay comes from Middle English geinseien, from gein-, "against" (from Old English gegn-, gean-) + sayen, "to say," from Old English secgan.

 

Tweet-Dropping

• When a twitter user has a one-way conversation with a celebrity so that to the users followers, it seems like they are talking to a celebrity and thus are instantly uber-cool in the eyes of their followers, when in fact they are a loser with nothing better to do than have a fake conversation with themselves. Similar to name dropping IRL, but even more annoying and even less likely to be true.

Tweet-Dropper: @BritneySpears How did the barbecue go? I heard Justin Timberlake was there too >.<>

Tweet-Dropper (A few minutes later, without a reply from Britney):@BritneySpears Haha yes, I suppose after a while it got pretty normal for both of you, you must go to loads of the same things!

Tweet-Dropper (Again few minutes later, still without any replies from Britney): Yeah, it's been great! How do you squeeze so much into 140 chars lol? =P

Tweet-Dropper's Follower: Wow, this guy I'm following is having a conversation with THE Britney Spears!

Tweet-Dropper (To self): They are totally falling for my Tweet-Dropping!

History

• Trojan horse: traditional date of the ancient Greeks' ruse to gain entry into Troy (1184 BCE)

  
• "La Marseillaise": France's national anthem was composed by Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle (1792)
• Library of Congress: was established with $5,000; today it has 18 million books and 100 million other items in 470 languages (1800)
• Hersheypark: amusement park opened in Hershey, Pennsylvania, for the exclusive use of Hershey Chocolate Company's employees; it was later opened to the public (1907)
• Easter Uprising: unsuccessful Irish rebellion against British rule began (1916)

Birthdays

• John Graunt 1620
• Edmund Cartwright 1743
• Robert Bailey Thomas 1766
• George Bascom 1836
• Henri Philippe Petain 1856
• Robert Penn Warren 1905
• Jack E. Leonard 1911
• Aaron Bell 1922
• J.D. Cannon 1922
• John Griffin 1928
• Freddy Scott 1933
• Shirley Boone 1934
• Shirley MacLaine 1934 - Actress
• Jill Ireland 1936
• Joe Henderson 1937
• Sue Grafton 1940 - Author
• Barbra Streisand 1942 - Singer

  
• Richard Sterban 1943 - Singer (The Oak Ridge Boys)
• Bob Lunn 1945
• Robert Knight 1945
• Doug Clifford 1945 - Musician (Creedence Clearwater Revival (CCR))
• Glenn Cornick 1947
• Eric Bogosian 1953 - Actor
• Vince Ferragamo 1954
• Michael O'Keefe 1955
• David J. 1957 - Musician (Bauhaus, Love and Rockets)
• Boris Williams 1958 - Musician (Cure)
• Glenn Morshower 1959 - Actor ("24")
• Billy Gould 1963 - Musician (Faith No More)
• Paul Ryder 1964 - Musician (Happy Mondays)
• Djimon Hounsou 1964 - Actor
• Cedric the Entertainer 1964 - Actor, comedian
• Patty Schemel 1967 - Musician (Hole)
• Omar Vizquel 1967 - Baseball player
• Aaron Comess 1968 - Musician (Spin Doctors)
• Chipper Jones 1972 - Baseball player
• Brian Aubrey Marshall 1973 - Musician (Creed)
• Eric Balfour 1977 - Actor
• Carlos Beltran 1977 - Baseball player
• Kelly Clarkson (Kelly Brianne Clarkson) 1983 - Singer, first "American Idol" participant to win a Grammy Award, Who's High Pitch?
  

 

 

 

Wednesday, February 10, 2021

osteopath \OS-tee-uh-path\, noun:

• a practitioner specializing in treatment chiefly by manipulation of the bones and muscles

by 1896, Americanism, back formation of osteopathy (osteo- "bone")

Twitterrhea

• Too many tweets per hour.

Guy Kawasaki had twitterrhea when he posted 18 Tweets in one hour on a Friday afternoon.

 

History

 

• Canada: was ceded by France to Britain when the Treaty of Paris ended the French and Indian War (1763)
• Queen Victoria: wed Prince Albert; when Albert died in 1861, Victoria went into a period of mourning that only ended 50 years later, when she died

  
• "All the News That's Fit to Print": first appeared on page 1 of The New York Times; the slogan was coined by owner Adolph S. Ochs (1897)
• 1934 - The first imperforated, ungummed sheets of postage stamps were issued by the U.S. Postal Service in New York City. "Chattanooga Choo Choo": earned bandleader Glenn Miller the first gold record for sales of over 1 million (1942)
• 1962 - The Soviet Union exchanged captured American U2 pilot Francis Gary Powers for the Soviet spy Rudolph Ivanovich Abel being held by the U.S.
  ZZ Top played their first show together (1970)
• Deep Blue: computer won its first game against world chess champ Garry Kasparov (1996)

Birthdays 

• Charles Lamb 1775

  
• William Allen White 1868
• Boris Pasternak 1890
• Jimmy Durante 1893
• Maurice Harold Macmillan 1894 - British Prime Minister from 1957-1963
• Bertolt Brecht 1898 - Dramatist, poet
• Dame Judith Anderson 1898
• Lon Chaney, Jr. 1905
• Larry Adler 1914
• Allie Reynolds 1919
• Neva Patterson 1922
• Leontyne Price 1927
• Jerry Goldsmith 1929
• Robert Wagner 1930
• James E. West 1931
• Don Wilson (The Ventures) 1937
• Roberta Flack 1939
• Jimmy Merchant (Frankie Lymon & The Teenagers) 1940
• Ral Donner 1943
• Frances Moore Lapp 1944
• Mark Spitz 1950
• Greg Norman 1955
• Kathleen Beller 1955
• Lionel Cartwright 1960
• George Stephanopoulos 1961
• Cliff Burton 1962 - Musician (Metallica)
• Laura Dern 1967
• Dude Mowrey 1972
• Elizabeth Banks (Elizabeth Maresal Mitchell) 1974 - Actress
• Chloë Grace Moretz 1997

 

 

 

WTF Friday: WAP

Sunday, July 1, 2018

makebate \MEYK-beyt\, noun:

• A person who causes contention or discord.

Makebate stems from the Middle English word bate which meant "contention". 

bittertweet

• The act of sending a tweet in which the user reflects on a sentimental moment of their life, i.e. a graduation, the end of a life period, or the passing of a loved one.

"OMG No longer in high school!!! Gonna miss it but moving on to bigger and better things!"
"RIP Grampa Joe. You lived a great long life but I'm glad you're in a better place now."
"All these bittertweets are bumming me out, man."

 

History

• Battle of San Juan Hill: future president Theodore Roosevelt led the Rough Riders in a charge up Kettle Hill during the Spanish-American War (1898)
• Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty: was signed by the US, UK, USSR and others to halt spread of nuclear arms (1968)
• Walkman: portable audio player was introduced by Sony (1979)
• Hong Kong: reverted to Chinese rule after 156 years of British rule (1997)

Birthdays

• Gottfried Von Leibniz 1649
• George Sand 1804 - Author Amandine Aurore Lucile Dudevant
• Cecil Rhodes 1854
• Louis Bleriot 1872 - Aviator, first to fly an airplane across the English Channel
• Susan Glapell 1882
• James M. Cain 1892
• Thomas Andrew Dorsey 1899 - Musician, "Father of Gospel Music", pianist, composed more than 1,000 gospel songs
• Charles Laughton 1899 - Actor ("Captain Kidd")
• Myron Cohen 1902 - Comedian, actor ("When Nature Calls")
• William Wyler 1902 - Director
• Estee Lauder 1908 - Cosmetics company founder
• Willie Dixon 1915 - Musician (Big Three Trio)
• Olivia DeHavilland 1916 - Actress ("The Heiress", "Gone with the Wind")
• Farley Granger (Farley Earle II) 1925 - Actor ("The Purple Heart")
• Bobby Day (Byrd) 1930 - Singer ("Rockin' Robin')
• Leslie Caron 1931 - Actress ("Lili", "Gigi", "An American in Paris")
• Jamie Farr 1934 - Actor ("M*A*S*H")
• Jean Marsh 1934 - Actress ("Frenzy")
• Claude Berri 1934 - Actor, director
• Sydney Pollack 1934 - Director
• David Prowse 1935 - Actor
• James Cotton 1935 - Blues musician
• Wally Amos, Jr. 1936 - Entrepreneur, created Famous Amos chocolate chip cookies
• Delaney Bramlett 1939 - Musician, singer (Delaney & Bonnie)
• Frank Parker 1939 - Singer (Ciccio)
• Twyla Tharp 1941 - Dancer, choreographer
• Rod Gilbert 1941 - Hockey player
• Karen Black (Ziegler) 1942 - Actress ("The Great Gatsby")
• Geneviève Bujold 1942 - Actress ("Coma")
• Deborah Harry 1945 - Singer (Blondie)
• Harold McLinton 1947 - Football player
• David Earnest Duke 1950 - Former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan,
• Trevor Eve 1951 - Actor
• Daryl Anderson 1951 - Actor ("Lou Grant")
• Fred Schneider 1951 - Musician (B-52's, Shake Society)
• Dan Aykroyd 1952 - Comedian, actor ("Driving Miss Daisy", "Saturday Night Live", "Ghostbusters", "The Blues Brothers")
• Pat Donovan 1953 - Football player
• Keith Whitley 1954 - Singer
• Alan Ruck 1956 - Actor
• Lorna Patterson 1956 - Actress ("Airplane!", "Private Benjamin")
• Lisa Blount 1957 - Actress
• Carl (Frederick Carlton) Lewis 1961 - Olympic Gold Medalist
• Michelle Wright 1961 - Country singer
• Princess Diana (Spencer) 1961 - Princess of Wales
• Andre Brougher 1962 - Actor
• Roddy Bottum 1963 - Musician (Faith No More)
• Pamela Denise Anderson 1967 - Actress ("Baywatch")
• Mark Pirro 1970 - Musician (Tripping Daisy)
• Henry Simmons 1970 - Actor ("NYPD Blue")
• Claire Forlani 1972 - Actress ("J.F.K.: Reckless Youth", "The Rock")
• Liv Tyler 1977 - Model , Acress ("Armagedon", "Lord of the Rings")
• Andrew Cavarno 1992 - Actor ("Party of Five")
• Stephen Cavarno 1992 - Actor ("Party of Five")