Monday, January 3, 2011

descry \dih-SKRY\, transitive verb:

1. To catch sight of, especially something distant or obscure; to discern.

2. To discover by observation; to detect.

Descry comes from Middle English, from Old French descrier, "to cry out, to proclaim." The Middle English word was originally applied to shouting one's discovery of an enemy, of game, or of land.

Paper GPS (n),

• any non-electronic format used for finding directions.

Examples:

A road atlas, foldout paper road map, handwritten directions, directions printed from free online map Web sites.

"John, how will you find our place if you get lost?"

Trivia

During the filming of the 2006 hit comedy Little Miss Sunshine, what did actor Alan Arkin, as heroin-snorting Grandpa, sniff instead of the illegal drug?

• Crushed vitamin B. Arkin’s performance won him an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor.

History

• Meiji Restoration: re-established the authority of Japan's emperor and led to the fall of the shoguns (1868)
• the Curse of the Bambino: Red Sox losing streak began with the team's sale of Babe Ruth to the Yankees; it lasted till 2004 (1920)
• March of Dimes: fundraising organization was founded by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to raise funds for the battle against poliomyelitis; it later expanded its aim to the prevention of premature birth, birth defects and infant mortality (1938)
• Alaska: the territory once known as Seward's Folly became the 49th and largest US state (1959)

Birthdays

• Cicero (106 BCE-43 BCE): orator and essayist who delivered 14 Philippic orations against Marc Antony
• Lucretia Mott (1793-1880): women's rights activist
• Robert Whitehead (1823-1905): inventor of the self-propelled torpedo; plus, aircraft designer T. Claude Ryan (18989-1982)
• Clement Attlee (1883-1967): post-WWII PM; plus, S. Vietnamese president Ngo Dinh Diem (1901-1963)
• J.R.R. Tolkien (1892-1973): writer, LOTR trilogy
• George Martin (85): producer of nearly all The Beatles' albums; plus musicians Victor Borge (1909-2000), Arik Einstein (72), Stephen Stills (66), John Paul Jones (65), James Carter (42) and Kimberley Locke (33)
• Sergio Leone (1929-1989): director of "spaghetti westerns"
• Eli Manning (30): Giants quarterback; also, athletes Bobby Hull (72) and Michael Schumacher (42)
• Victoria Principal (61): actor, Dallas; also, actors Robert Loggia (81), Dabney Coleman (79), Mel Gibson (55), Jason Marsden and Danica McKellar (both 36) and Nicholas Gonzalez (35)