Daily Calendar for Tuesday, May 14, 2024
Question of the Day
My kids want to know where “berserk” is, as in “going berserk.” Is the derivation from a place?
No, but we like the idea. Somewhere near bedlam, we’d guess. In truth, it comes from a person, who was a bit of a wild man, as you might expect. In Scandinavian mythology, Berserkr was a great warrior who always entered battle wearing only a bearskin. The name comes from bera (bear) and serkr (shirt), and it was the Saxons who converted it to berserk. By the late 19th century, it had come to mean not just the wild man but also wild or frenzied behavior, often associated with frustration. Berserkr supposedly had a dozen sons, all of whom carried the same name and reputation as furious fighters. Legend also has it that the original Berserkr could take on the appearance of various wild beasts and that neither firearm nor flame could harm him.
Advice of the Day
Add salt to the water under a double boiler; it will make the water boil faster.
Home Hint of the Day
Duct tape is a fibered tape known for its strength, durability and water resistance. It’s a quick fix for everything from leaky canoes to ripped seat covers to damaged pipes to broken furniture.
Word of the Day
Rainbow
Rainbows are formed opposite to the sun by the refraction and reflection of the sun’s rays in drops of falling rain. The raindrops are responsible for the colors of rainbows. They break the sunlight up into the full spectrum of colors, each drop acting as a sort of miniature prism. Each color emerges at a slightly different angle on each raindrop. When millions of raindrops gather, the spectrum shows up as distinct bands of color — each with a different length. Red is the longest and violet the shortest band. The arc is most pronounced when the Sun is close to the horizon.
Puzzle of the Day
Why did the cow cross the road?
To get to the udder side.
Born
- Gabriel Daniel Fahrenheit (physicist) –
- Bobby Darin (singer) –
- George Lucas (filmmaker) –
- David Byrne (musician) –
- Cate Blanchett (actress) –
- Amber Tamblyn (actress) –
- Rob Gronkowski (football player) –
- Miranda Cosgrove (actress) –
Died
- Henry John Heinz (founder of the H. J. Heinz Company) –
- Billie Burke (actress) –
- William Lear (inventor) –
- Rita Hayworth (actress) –
- Harry Blackstone Jr. (magician) –
- Frank Sinatra (singer & actor) –
- Robert Stack (actor) –
- Anna Lee (actress whose career in films and television spanned nearly 70 years) –
- Stanley Kunitz (United States poet laureate 2000-01, Pulitzer Prize winner) –
- B. B. King (blues legend) –
- Tim Conway (comedian & actor) –
- Grumpy Cat (feline celebrity with a grumpy expression) –
Events
- Jamestown, Virginia, became the first permanent British settlement in North America–
- 4-year-old Louis-Dieudonné (Louis XIV) became King of France –
- Lewis and Clark’s expedition left St. Louis for the West. The Corps of Discovery, as it was later to be called, originally included approximately 45 people.–
- 34 cavalry disembarked at Indianola, Texas–
- Copyright registered for J. Phillip Sousa’s Stars and Stripes Forever” march”–
- The Sparrow and the Hawk, a serial for kids, was broadcast for the first time over CBS radio–
- President Eisenhower broke ground for the Lincoln Center–
- First manned U.S. space station launched–
- The final episode of Seinfeld aired–
- Statue honoring the women athletes of the All-American Professional Baseball League installed at the National Baseball Hall of Fame, Cooperstown, New York–
- Racehorse Winning Brew ran 43.97 mph–
- Racehorse Winning Brew ran a quarter mile in 20.57 seconds at the Penn National Race Course in Grantville, Pennsylvania–
Weather
- Ten degrees below zero F at Climax, Colorado–
- The fourth-longest dry spell in Texas ended with 0.01 inch of rain in Brownsville–