Monday, February 7, 2011

desideratum \dih-sid-uh-RAY-tum; -RAH-\, noun;

plural desiderata:

• Something desired or considered necessary.

Desideratum is from Latin desideratum, "a thing desired," from desiderare, "to desire."

Hangry

• When you are so hungry that your lack of food causes you to become angry, frustrated or both. An amalgum of hungry and angry invented to describe that feeling when you get when you are out at a restaurant and have been waiting over an hour to get the meal that you have ordered.

"Damn! Where is that steak I ordered? We've been waiting for an hour and a half here. The service here is terrible! I'm starving! I don't know about you, but I'm starting to feel really hangry!"

Trivia

For what is FUBU, the name of the popular hip-hop clothing company, an acronym?

• For Us, By Us.

History

• British invasion: The Beatles arrived in US for the first time and were mobbed at JFK International Airport (1964)
• suffrage: women were granted the right to vote in Switzerland (1971)
• Pluto: the dwarf planet moved closer to the Sun than Neptune for the first time since its discovery (1979)
• "Baby Doc" Duvalier: Haiti's "president for life" fled for France; five years later on the same date, the nation swore in its first democratically elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide (1986)
• Maastricht Treaty: was signed in the Netherlands; it created the European Union as a successor to the European Community, and established a central banking system and a common currency — the euro (1992)

Birthdays

• Sir Thomas More (1478-1535): author of Utopia; he was beheaded for refusing to recognize King Henry VIII as head of the church
• Charles Dickens (1812-1870): author of Great Expectations and Oliver Twist; and, writers Laura Ingalls Wilder (1867-1957), Sinclair Lewis (1885-1951) and Gay Talese (79)
• Frederick Douglass (1817-1895): abolitionist
• An Wang (1920-1990): computer pioneer, Wang Laboratories; plus, inventor John Deere (1804-1886)
• James Spader (51): Alan Shore on Boston Legal; also, actors Miguel Ferrer (56), Eddie Izzard (49), Chris Rock and Jason Gedrick (both 46), Ashton Kutcher (33) and Tina Majorino (26)
• Garth Brooks (49): country singer/songwriter who, in 1992, had an unprecedented five albums at once on Billboard's pop top 50 chart; plus, musicians Eubie Blake (1883-1983) and David Bryan (49)