Saturday, February 5, 2011

abscond \ab-SKOND\, intransitive verb:

• To depart secretly; to steal away and hide oneself -- used especially of persons who withdraw to avoid arrest or prosecution.

Abscond comes from Latin abscondere, "to conceal," from ab-, abs-, "away" + condere, "to put, to place."

Pittsburgh Left

• Making a left turn just as the light turns green, pulling out before the oncoming traffic. Most people in Pittsburgh allow and encourage this behavior.

"That jagoff wouldn't give me the Pittsburgh left!"

"You should honk"

Trivia

How many fingers are there on a bat’s wing?

• Five—a small thumb and four long, thin fingers that serve as the ribs of the wing.

History

• United Artists: US film company was founded by Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks and D.W. Griffith; a current version of the studio is owned, in part, by Tom Cruise (1919)
• BBC pips: six short tones used to mark the end of the hour were broadcast for the first time from the Royal Greenwich Observatory (1924)
• Tybee bomb: the US lost a hydrogen bomb off the coast of Georgia; some 14 nuclear weapons are known to be missing from the US arsenal alone (1958)

Birthdays

• Sir Robert Peel (1788-1850): British PM who modernized the police force; Greek PM Andreas Papandreou (1919-1996) shared this birth date
• Andrew M. Greeley (83): priest and best-selling author; also, writers Johan Ludvig Runeberg (1804-1877), Ralph E. McGill (1898-1969), William Burroughs (1914-1997), Stephen J. Cannell (1941-2010) and Christopher Guest (63)
• Hank Aaron (77): MLB hall-of-famer and No. 2 on the all-time HR list; athletes Roger Staubach (69) and Roberto Alomar (43) also celebrate birthdays today
• Laura Linney (47): Golden Globe Award winner for The Big C; also, actors John Carradine (1906-1988), Stuart Damon (74), David Selby (70), Charlotte Rampling (65), Barbara Hershey (63), Tim Meadows (50), Jennifer Jason Leigh (49), Michael Sheen (42) and Jeremy Sumpter (22)