Monday, January 25, 2010

plenipotentiary \plen-uh-puh-TEN-shee-air-ee; -shuh-ree\,
adjective:

• Containing or conferring full power; invested with full power; as, "plenipotentiary license; plenipotentiary ministers."

noun:

• A person invested with full power to transact any business; especially, an ambassador or diplomatic agent with full power to negotiate a treaty or to transact other business.

Plenipotentiary derives from Latin plenus, "full" + potens, "powerful."
time vampire

• Something or someone who literally sucks your time like a vampire sucks blood.

My computer broke again, I spent all night working on that fucking time vampire.
Trivia
What is celebrated at a popular festival held biannually in Bra, Italy?

• Cheese. The medieval city holds the four-day cheese festival every other September. Bra is in the Piemonte area of northern Italy.

History

• Anne Boleyn: already pregnant, the lady-in-waiting was wed in secrecy to King Henry VIII of England (1533)
• Winter Olympics: were played for the first time in Chamonix, France in the I Olympic Winter Games (1924)
• Emmys: the first awards for excellence in TV were presented for local Los Angeles productions; Shirley Dinsdale was the first winner (1949)
• jet age: American Airlines ran its first scheduled transcontinental flight of a Boeing 707 (1959)
• OGLE-2005-BLG-390Lb: discovery of an extrasolar planet was announced; it orbits the star OGLE-2005-BLG-390L and lies near the center of the Milky Way (2006)

Berfdays

• Joseph Louis Lagrange(1736-1813): astronomer and mathematician; chemist Robert Boyle (1627-1691) shared this birth date
• Robert Burns (1759-1796): Scotland's favorite-son poet, "Auld Lang Syne"; other writers born on this date include W. Somerset Maugham(1874-1965) and Virginia Woolf (1882-1941)
• Eduard Shevardnadze (82): former president of the Georgian Republic; also, former Philippines president Córazon Aquino (1933-2009)
• Steve Prefontaine (1951-1975): long-distance runner who was the first athlete to sign a contract with Nike
• Ana Ortiz (39): Ugly Betty's sister, Hilda Suarez; also, actors Dean Jones (79), Jenifer Lewis (53), Dinah Manoff (52) and Mia Kirshner (35)
• Alicia Keys (29): Grammy-winning R&B singer