A LACUNA IN YOUR VOCAB

Lacuna: (ləˈk(y)o͞onə) pl. “lacunae” 

1. An unfilled space; a gap 

      “the journal has filled a lacuna in Middle Eastern studies”

          1.1 A missing portion in a book or manuscript

2. (Anatomy) A cavity or depression, esp. in bone

STANDOFF

Ruby Ridge was the site near Naples, Idaho where an 11 day siege occurred beginning on August 21, 1992. 

The standoff was between apocalyptic Christian white supremacist Randy Weaver, who was refusing to appear in court for selling illegal weapons. Weaver and his family holed up in a cabin in the mountains. After 20-25 minutes of gunfire, 14 year old Sam Weaver and a marshal Bill Degan were dead, along with a dog. Over the course of the siege, Vicki Weaver, Randy Weaver’s wife, was also killed.

(NPR: http://www.npr.org/2016/01/31/465000760/the-federal-response-to-oregon-occupation-may-have-roots-in-ruby-ridge; PBS: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/ruby-ridge/)

NEANDERFACT

Modern humans with Eurasian ancestry get between one and four percent of their DNA from Neanderthals.

(http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20151116-what-did-the-neanderthals-do-for-us)

AMERICAN HERO

Ida B. Wells was journalist who led an anti-lynching crusade, promoted justice for African Americans.

Wells was born in slavery, became a teacher (15), and then in 1891 began writing for a newspaper. She began a campaign against the lynching of black men in 1892 and founded the Negro Fellowship League (104). She also became involved with the suffrage movement, founding what may have been the first black woman suffrage group in 1913 after racist white feminists segregated them (113).

(DuRocher, Kristina. Ida B. Wells: Social Activist and Reformer)

BICENTENNIAL BACTERIUM

Legionnaires’ disease is a kind of pneumonia caused by Legionella bacteria, involving coughing, shortness of breath, fever, muscle aches, headaches, and sometimes diarrhea, nausea, and confusion.

It is so named because of an epidemic in the summer of 1976 in Philadelphia. The PA State American Legion (military veterans) gathered in the Bellevue Stratford hotel; after a few days, 221 of the legionnaires and their wives began feeling ill with headaches, fevers, chills, fatigue, and other flu-like symptoms and 34 died from the illness. The CDC eventually found that the outbreak was caused by a previously undetermined bacterium which is now known as Legionella pneumophilia, or Legionnaires’ disease. They also determined that the bacterium had been living in the hotel’s air conditioning systems.

(CDC: https://www.cdc.gov/legionella/about/signs-symptoms.html)(Legionnaires' Disease By Jon Zonderman, Laurel Shader, I. Edward Alcamo, page 8)

SANDAL SCANDAL

ultracrepidarian (uhl-truh-krep-i-DAIR-ee-uhn) is a word “noting or pertaining to a person who crticizes, judges, or gives advice outside the area of his or her expertise.”

The word was coined by William Hazlitt (1778-1830) from Latin ultra crepidam “beyond/above the sandal.” Hazlitt took it from a story by Pliny the Elder (a.d. 23-79) in which a cobbler criticized the painter Apelles for painting a sandal incorrectly; Apelles fixed his error. The next day, the cobbler criticized the painting of the leg that the sandal was on, causing Apelles to remark that “a shoemaker should not judge above his sandal”

(http://www.dictionary.com/wordoftheday/2017/05/22/ultracrepidarian)

MORE STATE FACTS

As of 2016 rankings, West Virginia has the highest drug death rate at 32.2 deaths per 100,000 population. 

As of 2016, Louisiana has the highest rates of gonorrhea and syphilis.

(CDC: https://www.cdc.gov/nchhstp/stateprofiles/pdf/Louisiana_profile.pdf)(http://www.americashealthrankings.org/explore/2016-annual-report/measure/Drugdeaths/state/ALL)

“LE MOYENNE CAPORAL”

Napoleon was not actually very short. Historians have decided that he was about 5 feet 6 inches, which was actually slightly taller than average for men of his time and place.

(Price, Munro. Napoleon: The End of Glory. page 7).

BODY PART NAMES

The flat space between your eyebrows is called a glabella

The little white crescent at the end of your fingernail is a lunula

Your elbow-pit is called the cubital fossa

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cubital%20fossa http://www.dictionary.com/browse/glabella?s=ts http://www.dictionary.com/browse/lunula

THEY’RE STICK-ING AROUND

The rarest known insect is Lord Howe Island stick insect. 

They are large stick insects nicknamed “tree lobsters” which thrive only on Lord Howe Island (which is between Australia and New Zealand for those who do not know). Before 2001, the last seen LHI stick insect on the island was in 1920; they were presumed extinct due to the hungry invasive rats brought by white people. In 2001, a small population of these critters were found under a single shrub.

(http://entomology.unl.edu/scilit/rarest-insect) (http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/02/11/465781993/love-giant-insects-meet-the-tree-lobster-back-from-the-brink)

A SIGHT FOR POOR EYES

Next time you go to the eye doctor and try to read off of that eyesight testing chart, you will be looking at the Snellen Chart. 

Hermann Snellen developed this chart in the 1860s.

(https://www.aao.org/eye-health/tips-prevention/eye-chart-facts-history)

CALLING AGENT P

The correct plural of “platypus” is “platypodes.” The correct plural of “octopus” is “octopodes.”

The reason for this is that platypus and octopus are both Greek words, not Latin, as people tend to assume. Of course, just because these plurals are technically correct, this doesn’t mean that the way you say them in your own dialect is invalid. 

(Burridge, Kate. Blooming English: Observations on the Roots, Cultivation and Hybrids of the English Language, page 135).

CROOKED LETTER HUMPBACK

As of 2016, Mississippi has the highest rate of diabetes at 14.7% adults. It also has the highest rate of infant death at 8.9 deaths per 1000 live births.

Mississippi is currently ranked (as of 2016) as the overall unhealthiest state according to America’s Health Rankings. Hawaii is the healthiest.

(http://www.americashealthrankings.org/explore/2016-annual-report/measure/Overall/state/HI  (http://www.americashealthrankings.org/explore/2016-annual-report/measure/Overall/state/MS  (http://www.americashealthrankings.org/explore/2016-annual-report/measure/Diabetes/state/ALL)

DID *WE* DO THAT...?

Many scientists suggest that we no longer live in the Holocene epoch of geology, but in a newly-proposed epoch called the Anthropocene (the age of Man). The term was coined by Nobel Prize-winning Dutch chemist Paul Crutzen in 2002.

Scientists are still considering the official acceptance of the Anthropocene as an epoch, as it is yet unclear if the Anthropocene satisfies the criteria used for naming a new epoch.  

Crutzen and some others made the case for formally recognizing the Anthropocene as a new epoch in Earth history beginning with the Industrial Revolution around 1800. Their reasons involved “the profound changes to our relationship with the rest of the living world” (Steffen 842) including humanity’s affect upon the ozone layer, the large emission of carbon dioxide, our alteration of several other element cycles, our modification of the terrestrial water cycle, and the likelihood that we are driving the sixth major extinction in Earth history (Steffen 843).

(Steffen, Will; Jacques Grinevald, Paul Crutzen and John McNeill. “The Anthropocene: conceptual and historical perspectives.” Philosophical Transactions: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences, Vol. 369, No. 1938, The Anthropocene: a new epoch of geological time? (13 March 2011), pp. 842-867. Published by the Royal Society)

MY GOD, IT’S FULL OF SMALL GLASS BEADS

For 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), the director Stanley Kubrick established a rarely used technique in filmmaking—front-screen projection. While other films projected the background of the scene onto the back of a translucent screen, Kubrick projected it onto the front of an opaque screen. In order to eliminate the shadows that the actors would inevitably cast on the screen in this lighting and to keep the shot from looking washed out, he used a screen made of Scotchlite. This material was made of millions of tiny glass beads which reflected the light back to its source, thus resolving both issues. Later, Star Wars would use Scotchlite for its light sabers, which were just sticks wrapped in this material.

(Miller, Ron. Special Effects: An Introduction to Movie Magic. Page 89.)

SEE THE CROOKED WIZARD RUN

The first feature film to ever be shown on television was The Crooked Circle--which was aired while the movie was still in theaters--on March 10, 1933. However, this was broadcast to only 5 television sets in Los Angeles (Bassior 53). 

The first feature film to be broadcast on a coast-to-coast prime time network was The Wizard of Oz (1939) on CBS on November 3, 1956 (Marmorstein 269).

Although made-for-TV-specials existed before the 60s, the first made-for-TV-movie as such debuted on October 17, 1964. This movie was See How They Run, which told the story of three teenaged girls, the murder of their father, and an international crime syndicate (Edgerton, 253).

(Bassior, Jean-Noel. Space Patrol: Missions of Daring in the Name of Early Television.) (Edgerton, Gary. “A Great Awakening: Prime Time for Network Television--1964-1975” The Columbia History of American Television.) (Marmorstein, Gary. Hollywood Rhapsody: Movie Music and Its Makers, 1900 to 1975.)

STATE STATS

Alaska contains the northernmost, westernmost, AND easternmost points in the country (as measured if the prime meridian and 180 degree longitude are considered east-west boundaries). The southernmost point is in Hawaii.

The largest state is Alaska; the smallest is Rhode Island

The highest mountain in the U.S. is Denali in Alaska

The rainiest spot is Mount Waialeale, Kauai, Hawaii

The deepest lake is Crater Lake in Oregon

The largest office building is the Pentagon in Virginia 

(The World Almanac and Book of Facts 2017)