Thursday, February 3, 2011

eclat \ey-KLAH\, noun:

1. Brilliance of success, reputation, etc.

2. Showy or elaborate display.

3. Acclamation; acclaim.

Eclat comes from the French eclat, "fragment, burst, splinter, flash," which relates to esclater, "to burst, break violently."

internest

• The concoon of blankets, pillows, duvets, and comfy things you gather around yourself to keep warm whilst spending long amounts of time on the internet.

1. Hey were's Jane tonight?

Oh she didn't want to leave her internest.

2. Tom knew that eating pizza in his internest was a bad idea, but it was just too warm and snuggly.

Trivia

What popular candy bar is considered a good luck charm by test-taking Japanese students?

• The Kit Kat bar, because its Japanese pronunciation, kitto katto, sounds very much like the phrase kitto katsu, which, roughly translated, means “win without fail.”

History

• 15th Amendment: was ratified, granting black men the right to vote (1870)
• 16th amendment: was ratified, authorizing income tax on a federal level in the US (1913)
• the day the music died: a plane crash killed rock stars Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and "the Big Bopper" (1959)
• Luna 9: Soviet spacecraft became the first to soft-land on the moon (1966)

Birthdays

• Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847): composer, conductor
• Gertrude Stein (1874-1946): avant garde author; also, editor Horace Greeley (1811-1872) and writer James Michener (1907-1997)
• Norman Rockwell (1894-1978): illustrator who painted a nostalgic, idealized picture of small-town US life
• Juan Negrin (1894-1956): Spanish Republican PM during Spanish Civil War
• Paul Sarbanes (78): Maryland's longest-serving senator; he sponsored the Sarbanes-Oxley Act
• Bob Griese (66): NFL hall-of-famer; and, quarterback Fran Tarkenton (71)
• Nathan Lane (55): comic actor, The Producers; plus, actors Joey Bishop (1918-2007), Shelley Berman (85), Blythe Danner (68), Morgan Fairchild (61), Thomas Calabro (52), Maura Tierney (46), Warwick Davis (41) and Isla Fisher (35)