Friday, August 12, 2011

mundify \MUHN-duh-fahy\, verb:

• To purge or purify.

Mundify is built from two Latin roots, mundi-, "to clean," and ficare, "to do."

Carnal Tunnel Syndrome

• A tingling or numbness or a sharp, piercing pain shooting through the wrist as a direct result of engaging in pleasuring one's self while watching excessive porn.

Leisure Suit Larry is suffering from Carnal Tunnel Syndrome ever since his divorce was final 6 months ago.

Trivia

Who was pictured on the first $5 bill authorized by the U.S. in 1861? How about the first $10 bill?

• Hamilton was on the $5 bill: Lincoln on the $10 bill—the reverse of today’s $5 and $10 bills.

History

• Chicago: the Windy City was founded with a population of 350 (1833)


• Isaac Singer: got a patent for his sewing machine (1851)


• Spanish-American War: peace protocol was signed; Guam, Puerto Rico and the Philippines were ceded to the US and Cuba was released from Spanish rule (1898)


• IBM-PC: IBM introduced its first personal computer, which contained an Intel chip and Microsoft's DOS operating system (1981)


• Sue: the most complete Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton ever found was discovered in South Dakota; she now resides in Chicago's Field Museum of Natural History (1990)


• Kursk: Russian nuclear submarine sank in the Barents Sea, killing the whole of its 118-member crew (2000)

Birthdays

• Linda O'Neil (38): actress and the most popular body model that you probably never heard of.


• George IV (1762-1830): king of Great Britain


• Katharine Lee Bates (1859-1929): poet who wrote "America the Beautiful"; plus, writers Robert Southey (1774-1843), Jacinto Benavente (1866-1954), Mary Roberts Rinehart (1876-1958) and Ann M. Martin (56)


• Cecil B. DeMille (1881-1959): director of blockbusters like The Ten Commandments; plus, director John Derek (1926-1998)


• Erwin Schrödinger (1887-1961): theoretical physicist, Schrödinger's equation


• Mark Knopfler (62): composer, guitarist, rock singer; also, jazzman Pat Metheny (57)


• Peter Krause (46): Nate Fisher in Six Feet Under and Adam Braverman in Parenthood; also, actors Cantinflas (1911-1993), George Hamilton (72), Bruce Greenwood (55), Michael Ian Black (40), Rebecca Gayheart (39), Casey Affleck (36), and Maggie Lawson and Dominique Swain (both 30)


• Pete Sampras (40): tennis champ; also baseball hall-of-famer Christy Mathewson (1880-1925)

Read more: http://www.answers.com/

Thursday, August 11, 2011

billet \BIL-it\, verb:

1. To provide or obtain lodging.

2. To direct (a soldier) by ticket, note, or verbal order, where to lodge.

noun:

1. Lodging for a soldier, student, etc., as in a private home or nonmilitary public building.

2. A small chunk of wood; a short section of a log, especially one cut for fuel.

Billet stems from the French billet, "official register." The word relates to the English bill.

Mental virginity

• The general state of mind characterized by complete ignorance about sex and human reproduction.

Dude they think that sex ed teaches us a heck of a lot of stuff we didn't know, but the truth is, we lost our mental virginity a while back.

Totally dude.

*high five

Trivia

What animal was given the Latin name Avahi cleesei in honor of actor-funnyman John Cleese?

• Not a python—a woolly lemur. It was named for Cleese, who played a lemur-loving zookeeper in the 1997 film comedy Fierce Creatures and hosted a 1998 documentary about the endangered species titled Operation Lemur.

History

• SOS: Arapahoe became the first American ship to use the distress signal (1909)


• Alcatraz: island prison in San Francisco Bay received its first civilian inmates (1934)


• Hussein ibn Talal: 16-year-old was proclaimed king of Jordan after his father was declared mentally unfit (1952)


• Watts riots: civil disturbances in Los Angeles left 34 dead (1965)


• The Mall of America: the most-visited mall in the world opened on the site of Metropolitan Stadium in Bloomington, Minnesota (1992)

Birthdays

• Friedrich Ludwig Jahn (1778-1852): father of gymnastics


• Alex Haley (1921-1992): author of Roots; also, writers Eduard Devrient (1801-1877), Hugh MacDiarmid (1892-1978) and Louise Bogan (1897-1970)


• Jerry Falwell (1933-2007): Moral Majority founder


• Steve Wozniak (61): cofounder of Apple Computers


• Hulk Hogan (58): wrestler/actor, host of NBC's American Gladiators


• Julia Anne Clarke (39): aka Julie Clarke, Playmate 03/91, actress, model, hardbody

Read more: http://www.answers.com/

Tuesday, August 9, 2011

amaranthine \am-uh-RAN-thin\, adjective:

1. Unfading; everlasting.

2. Of or like the amaranth flower.

3. Of purplish-red color.

Amaranthine is a form of the Greek amarantos, "everlasting," ascribed to an imaginary flower that never fades.

humblebrag

• Subtly letting others now about how fantastic your life is while undercutting it with a bit of self-effacing humor or "woe is me" gloss.

Uggggh just ate about fifteen piece of chocolate gotta learn to control myself when flying first class or they'll cancel my modelling contract LOL :p #humblebrag

Trivia

In the Star Wars galaxy, what was the name of Han Solo’s home planet?

• Corellia.

History

• Tower of Pisa: construction on the campanile began; it would take 200 years to complete, and the uneven settling of the foundation would cause it to lean (1173)


• Sistine Chapel: the private chapel of the popes was consecrated and its first mass was celebrated (1483)


• Webster-Ashburton Treaty: established much of the border between the US and Canada (1842)


• 1936 Summer Olympics: Jesse Owens became the first American to win four gold medals in one Olympiad (1936)


• Nagasaki: atom bomb called the Fat Man, dropped by the Bockscar, devastated a second Japanese city (1945)


• Singapore: seceded from and became independent of Malaysia (1965)


• Richard M. Nixon: officially left office as America's 37th president and the first one to resign; vice president Gerald Ford became president (1974)

Birthdays

• Jean Piaget (1896-1980): specialist in developmental psychology


• P.L. Travers (1899-1996): author, Mary Poppins; plus, writers Izaak Walton (1593-1683), John Dryden (1631 [O.S.]-1700), Gaston Paris (1839-1903) and Philip Larkin (1922-1985)


• Rod Laver (73): tennis great; athletes Ralph Houk (92), Bob Cousy (83), Ken Norton (68), Brett Hull (47), Deion Sanders (44) and Chamique Holdsclaw (34) were also born on this date


• Eric Bana (43): time-traveler Henry DeTamble in The Time Traveler's Wife; also, actors Robert Shaw (1927-1978), David Steinberg (69), Sam Elliott (67), Melanie Griffith (54), Amanda Bearse (53), Whitney Houston (48), Gillian Anderson (43), Jessica Capshaw (35) and Audrey Tatou (33)

Read more: http://www.answers.com/

Monday, August 8, 2011

chaptalize \SHAP-tuh-lahyz\, verb:

• To increase the alcohol in a wine by adding sugar.

Chaptalize comes from the French chaptaliser, which is in turn named for the French chemist J. A. Chaptal.

debt ceiling chicken

• A game where everyone in Congress refuses to agree on a deal to raise the debt ceiling until the last possible minute. It's like regular chicken, but instead of driving cars at each other, politicians are using the economy.

John Boehner: I don't give a shit if our country turns into Mad Max 2. I'm going to win this game of debt ceiling chicken.

Barack Obama: Challenge accepted!

Trivia

What ordinance about bigamy was issued in Nuremburg, Germany, in 1650, two years after the Thirty Years War ended?

• The parliament ruled that for the next 10 years, in order to rebuild the city’s devastated population, each male citizen would be permitted to have two wives.

History

• Mont Blanc: the tallest Alp was summited for the first time, by Frenchmen Jacques Balmat and Michel-Gabriel Paccard (1786)


• mimeograph: was patented by Thomas A. Edison (1876)


• Great Train Robbery: 15 thieves stole more than £2m. from a London-bound traveling post office after stopping the train with a false red signal in Buckinghamshire (1963)


• Richard Nixon: announced his resignation from the presidency in the wake of Watergate, six years to the day after he was nominated by the Republican Party (1974)

Birthdays

• Emiliano Zapata (1879-1919): rebel leader of the Mexican revolution


• Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings (1896-1953): Pulitzer Prize-winner for The Yearling; plus, winner of the first Pulitzer Prize for poetry Sara Teasdale (1884-1933)


• Paul Dirac (1902-1984): mathematician and physicist who won a Nobel Prize for work on atomic theory


• Dino De Laurentiis (92): film producer, Serpico; also, director/producer Martin Brest (60)


• Dustin Hoffman (74): award-winning actor, Rain Man; plus, actors Esther Williams (90), Connie Stevens (73), Keith Carradine (62), Donny Most (58), Tawny Cypress (35), Michael Urie (31) and Meagan Good (30)


• Drew Lachey (35): singer/dancer, 98 Degrees, DWTS; also, musicians Mel Tillis (79), Phil Balsley (72), The Edge (50), Kool Moe Dee (49) and JC Chasez (35)

Read more: http://www.answers.com/

Wednesday, August 3, 2011

hacienda \hah-see-EN-duh\, noun:

• A large estate, especially one used for farming or ranching.

Hacienda enters English from the Spanish word of the same meaning, which derives from the Latin facienda, "things to be done or made."

Boner Shock

• Expressions or actions performed that causes your boner to go into "shock" or go back into the flaccid stage.

That girl gave me boner shock when right before sex she said "I always forgets to take my birth control."

Trivia

What Hollywood figure’s first screen appearance was as the baby boy being christened in the famous baptism scene in The Godfather?

• Actress-director-producer Sofia Coppola, daughter of director Francis Ford Coppola. She was three weeks old when the scene was shot in 1971.

History

• Christopher Columbus: set sail from Palos, Spain, on the voyage that would take him to America (1492)
• La Scala: leading opera house opened in Milan with a production of Salieri's opera Europa riconosciuta, which was not performed again until December 7, 2004, when La Scala reopened after renovations (1788)
• NBA: the National Basketball League and the Basketball Association of America merged to form America's professional basketball league (1949)
• USS Nautilus: the world's first nuclear-powered submarine sailed over the North Pole underwater in a journey under the Arctic ice cap (1958)
• Air Traffic Controllers Strike: PATCO workers walked out, leading to the firing of nearly all air traffic controllers by President Ronald Reagan two days later; in the wake of this event, US labor unions were weakened (1981)
• Statue of Liberty: pedestal reopened to the public for first time since 9/11 (2004)

Birthdays

• Stanley Baldwin (1867-1947): British three-term prime minister; Tunisian president Habib Bourguiba (1903-2000) shared this birth date
• P.D. James (91): mystery writer; also, authors Henry Cuyler Bunner (1855-1896), Rupert Brooke (1887-1915), Ernie Pyle (1900-1945), Leon Uris (1924-2003) and Steven Millhauser (68)
• Tony Bennett (85): singer, "(I Left My Heart) in San Francisco"; also, musicians Richard Adler (90), Beverly Lee (70), B.B. Dickerson (62), Randy Scruggs (58) and James Hetfield (48)
• Martha Stewart (70): homemaker guru who's become a household name
• John C. McGinley (52): Perry Cox on Scrubs; also, actors Martin Sheen (71), Isaiah Washington (48), Brigid Brannagh (39) and Evangeline Lilly (32)
• Tom Brady (34): New England Patriots quarterback; plus, football coach Marv Levy (86) and hockey hall-of-famer Marcel Dionne (60)

Read more: http://www.answers.com/