Forbidden Gardens, with 6,000 Chinese terracotta warriors, slightly larger than garden gnomes in the Houston suburb of Katy, is closing to make room for a highway. The brainchild of a reclusive Hong Kong native and U.S. resident who wanted to impress his adopted countrymen with China's rich heritage, it was mostly visited by local schoolchildren and road-tripping retirees. But once word spread that the Forbidden Gardens was closing down, folks began elbowing each other out of the way to grab a piece of it, in what perhaps became one of America's oddest liquidation sales. Everything had to go. From the delicately handcrafted pavilions that were part of a 1/20th scale replica of Beijing's Forbidden City to the majestic cherry trees adorning the entrance. The goldfish that inhabit its man-made lake were up for grabs as well. David Gornet, executive director of the Grand Parkway Association, a state-run corporation created to advance the highway project, says the highway shouldn't diminish the value of the attraction because its path won't interfere with the existing buildings. Mr. Poon should also benefit from valuable access to a frontage road, he says.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704476604576158253250695430.html

The magnitude 6.3 earthquake that devastated Christchurch was strong enough to shake 30 million tonnes of ice loose from Tasman Glacier at Aoraki Mt Cook National Park. Passengers of two explorer boats were hit with waves of up to 3.5 metres as the ice crashed into Terminal Lake under the Tasman Glacier at the mountain. Aoraki Mount Cook Alpine Village tourism manager Denis Callesen said huge icebergs formed in the lake, which were then rocked by massive waves for 30 minutes. http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10708071

Scholars recently found that Washington University in St. Louis holds the third-largest collection of books once owned by Thomas Jefferson. The discovery, consisting of 28 titles in 74 volumes, was made by Monticello scholars and announced February 21 by the Thomas Jefferson Foundation and the University. These books will be available in the Department of Special Collections in Olin Library. Students are welcome to come in to look at, or even pick up, the books. The books have resided in the library for 131 years and were tracked down by two Monticello scholars who were tracing the posthumous whereabouts of Jefferson’s book collection. http://www.studlife.com/news/2011/02/23/jefferson%e2%80%99s-books-found-in-olin/

Restaurant Review: Girl & the Goat, Architect of Flavor by Dana Bowen
Stephanie Izard's pizza doesn't taste like any pizza I've had before, not with its cool drizzle of yogurt and julienne of rapini greens. That dish epitomizes what makes Izard's Girl & the Goat—the Chicago restaurant she opened last July, two years after winning the fourth season of Bravo's Top Chef—such an interesting place. I first tried it a few months ago, when I went to Chicago specifically to eat. The plan was to revisit a few restaurants I hadn't been to in years—like Cafe Spiaggia (Tony Mantuano's less-formal offshoot of Spiaggia), which still turns out some of the city's best pastas—and to check out several newer places I hadn't been to yet, like Paul Kahan's Midwestern gastro pub, Publican (a pork lover's dream, with the likes of homemade charcuterie, boudin blank, and ham chops). These were good meals. Solid meals. But Girl & the Goat was something else entirely. The Goat, as Chicagoans have taken to calling it, is a very serious restaurant. Take, for example, the bustling open kitchen; staffed with more than a dozen cooks, it stretches across the entire back wall, the centerpiece of which is a blazing wood-burning oven that fills the restaurant with a bonfire aroma and imparts a smoky flavor to many of its dishes. We ordered more than half the menu that first night; it's a small-plates menu, so you can do that, right? Not really. These aren't the kind of noshy, elemental small plates you find at wine bars: each of the 30-plus menu items—which are broken down into the categories Vegetables, Fish, and Meat—is a fully realized dish. Excellent local beers on tap. Much more at:
http://www.saveur.com/article/travels/Restaurant-Review-Girl-and-the-Goat?cmpid=teaser

Sicily is the home of Archimedes, of the mythical Cyclops and of the Medusa. By about 300 BC, the Greeks represented it on coins like “Trinakrias” (Triangle, because of its shape) and, since then, it was considered the symbol of Sicily. The “Trinacria” is a three-legged figure, with the face of Medusa at the junction of the legs. It almost certainly represents the physical shape of Sicilia, a natural triangle with capes near Messina (Capo Peloro), Siracusa (Capo Passero), and Marsala (Capo Lilibeo). http://www.bagliogurafo.it/Trinacria%20and%20Sicilian%20flag.pdf

Selinunte (Greek: Σελινοῦς; Latin: Selinus) is an ancient Greek archaeological site on the south coast of Sicily, southern Italy, between the valleys of the rivers Belice and Modione in the province of Trapani. The archaeological site contains five temples centered on an acropolis. Of the five temples, only the Temple of Hera, also known as "Temple E", has been re-erected. Selinunte was one of the most important of the Greek colonies in Sicily, situated on the southwest coast of that island, at the mouth of the small river of the same name, and 6.5 km west of that of the Hypsas (the modern Belice River. The name is supposed to have been derived from quantities of wild parsley (σελινὸς) that grew on the spot. For the same reason, they adopted the parsley leaf as the symbol on their coins. See pictures at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selinunte

Feedback to A.Word.A.Day
From: Phil Jans Subject: Fluke
Fluke Corporation has grown from a local Pacific Northwest company to a global leader in the manufacture of precision testing instruments. When I was a boy, my dad gleefully suggested a slogan he thought they should adopt: "If it Works, It's a Fluke."
From: Barbara Ledger Subject: Fluke
Here in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, there's a trucking firm with a sense of humour, called Fluke Transportation. When sailing down the highway, you'll often see their trucks, with the message emblazoned on the side: "If it's on time. .. it's a Fluke."
From: Bill Thieleman Subject: fluke or flounder
Fluke brought me back to my boyhood days of boating on Long Island. Even though my father didn't believe that fish oil and teak decks mix well, he showed me the difference between fluke and flounder. They are both flatfish or teleosts but a fluke's right eye rotates to the fish's left side, its mouth is bigger and full of teeth, and it swims right side down. A flounder's left eye migrates over to its right side (flounder, philander, roving eye), it has a smaller mouth with no visible teeth and it swims left side down.
From: Josh Shein Subject: fell
I'm not sure if the same applies in the US, but in Australia the expression "in one fell swoop" seems to have morphed into "in one foul swoop". I've given up trying to point out the error.
It's not just in Australia. As the word fell in the sense of fierce or cruel has fallen out of use, people try to make sense of the idiom with other words, words that are familiar to them. You may see one foul swoop or one fowl swoop. These reinterpreted words are also known as eggcorns. -Anu Garg
From: Peter Lawless Subject: fell
The expression "one fell swoop" is also a description used for centuries in falconry. It describes the act of a falcon catching prey in only one swoop of a fell -- a plateau or piece of open highland country (as you have described) -- such a falcon would be highly-prized and any chicks bred from that bird would fetch a premium price.