Tuesday, February 15, 2011

uxorious \uk-SOR-ee-us; ug-ZOR-\, adjective:

• Excessively fond of or submissive to a wife.

Uxorious is from Latin uxorius, from uxor, wife.

page clicker

• An eBook that is exciting to read and hard to put down.

While reading Neil deGrass Tyson's Autobiography on my Amazon Kindle and his personal account of the events of September 11th 2001 I found the eBook to be a real page clicker as I became absorbed in the story.

Trivia

Which state’s automobile license plate boasts that it is the Birthplace of Aviation?

• Ohio’s. Dayton was the home of aviation pioneers Orville and Wilbur Wright. North Carolina’s license plate also commemorates its ties to the Wrights, celebrating their Kitty Hawk flight with the motto First in Flight.

History

• USS Maine: exploded and sank in Havana harbor, helping to provoke the Spanish-American War (1898)
• Decimal Day: the UK and Ireland switched their currencies to a decimal system (1971)
• Soviet invasion of Afghanistan: the Soviet Union announced that all its troops had left Afghanistan, nine years after the invasion began (1989)
• Canadian flag: red-and-white maple leaf banner was adopted (1965)
• YouTube: video sharing website launched in the US (2005)

Birthdays

• Galileo Galilei (1564-1642): physicist/mathematician, considered the father of modern astronomy; plus, mathematician Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947)
• Louis XV (1710-1774): king of France
• Henry Steinway (1797-1871): piano man; plus, musicians Brian Holland (70), Henry Threadgill (67) and Melissa Manchester (60)
• Cyrus McCormick (1809-1884): inventor of the mechanical reaper; also, Tiffany's founder Charles Lewis Tiffany (1812-1902)
• Susan B. Anthony (1820-1906): suffragette; plus, feminist Susan Brownmiller (76)
• Matt Groening (57): creator of The Simpsons
• Joseph R. Gannascoli (52): Vito Spatafore on The Sopranos; also, actors John Barrymore (1882-1942), Kevin McCarthy (1914-2010), Allan Arbus (93), Harvey Korman (1927-2008), Claire Bloom (80), Jane Seymour (60), Christopher McDonald (56), Michael Easton (44), Renee O'Connor (40), Sarah Wynter (38) and Amber Riley (25)