wampum (WOM-puhm) noun
1. Beads made from shells, strung in strands, belts, etc. used for ceremonial purposes, jewelry, and money.
2. Money.
Short for Massachusett wampompeag, from wampan (white) + api (string) + -ag, plural suffix. Massachusett, now extinct, was a member of the Algonquian language family spoken in the US and Canada. Earliest documented use: 1636.
pharaoh (FAR-o) noun
1. A title of an ancient Egyptian ruler.
2. A tyrant.
Via Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, from Egyptian pr-o, from pr (house) + o (great). The designation was for the palace but later used to refer to the king, just as White House can refer to the US President. Earliest documented use: around 1175. Egyptian is an extinct language of ancient Egypt.
mantissa (man-TIS-uh) noun
1. An addition of little importance.
2. The decimal part of a logarithm or the positive fractional part of a number.
Via Latin mantisa/mantissa (makeweight, something put in a scale to complete a needed weight), from a now extinct language, Etruscan, once spoken in what is now Tuscany, Italy. Earliest documented use: 1641. A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg

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From: Peter Nau Subject: DIOXIDE error
"What is special about the word DIOXIDE? You don't have to be a chemist to know that it reads the same upside down."
Not true, and a chemist would know better, since symmetry is very important to chemists. Stand on your head, read DIOXIDE, and you'll see what I mean. The usual meaning for "upside down" is to rotate something by 180 degrees, which doesn't achieve what you have in mind. The word does read the same if you fold over the word in place, top to bottom -- or if you read its reflection in a mirror placed along the top or bottom edge of the word. Furthermore, if it's written on a piece of paper, it reads the same upside down, if you flip the paper over (top to bottom) and read it with a strong light shining through the paper. Yes, this is a symmetry problem. Any word has the same property if its spelling exclusively comprises some of these upper case letters: BCDEHIOX. The letters are the same upon top/bottom reflection (as described above). The reason this happens, is that if you draw a horizontal line across the middle of the letters, the top and bottom of each letter are mirror images of each other. 'K' can be written so as to have this property, but it usually isn't.
From: Peter Langston Subject: verisimilitude
You wrote: The word verisimilitude has alternating consonants and vowels. Can you find a longer word with this property? Yes, here are a few: adenolipomatosis, aluminosilicate, anatomicomedical, categorematical, epicoracohumeral, epatomelanosis, hepatoperitonitis, heterometabolic, katakinetomeric, medicobotanical,
overimaginative, papulovesicular, parasitological, pericanalicular, reticulatoramose, reticulatovenose, retinopapilitis, semimineralized, superacidulated, superoratorical, vesiculotubular.
From: Zack Fisher Subject: yob
The creation of words and names by reversing the spelling of (other) words brings to mind Horace Miner's classic article Body Ritual Among The Nacirema. The article was published in The American Anthropologist in June 1956 and describes the quaint body rituals among the highly superstitious Nacirema people. The Nacirema believe that "...the human body is ugly and that its natural tendency is to debility and disease." The article specifies various customs, including daily purification rituals, acquiring potions and charms from medicine men, and visiting the Latipso temple where "...ceremonies are so harsh that it is phenomenal that a fair proportion of the really sick natives who enter the temple ever recover." The article uses professional and slightly condescending language, as befits an anthropological study of such a backward tribe. This is all very well until you realize that "Nacirema" is "American" spelled backwards and "Latipso" is "[H]ospital" in reverse. The article makes a fun and educational read.
From: Nancy Gill Subject: spelled backwards
Knitters who make a mistake and un-knit what they have done back to the point of the error are said to be "tink"-ing their work -- knit spelled backwards.

Dec. 7, 2011 marks the 70th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. President Roosevelt called the unprovoked attack "a day that will live in infamy." Almost overnight, the United States moved from an officially neutral observer to a key participant in a world-wide war. By attacking the United States, Japan brought the world's greatest industrial complex, a skilled and resolved labor force and the largest supply of strategic raw materials into the war on the side of the Allies. The war turned into global conflict involving every major power in the world. Find links to interviews and more at: http://ohsweb.ohiohistory.org/enews/1111d.shtml

In an effort to hold onto sales of cholesterol fighter Lipitor after the drug loses patent protection at the end of this month, Pfizer is planning to sell the pills at generic prices directly to patients. If successful, the risky move could rewrite the industry's playbook for selling medicines. To stem the exodus, Pfizer has partnered with Diplomat Specialty Pharmacy in Flint, Mich., to mail Lipitor to patients who order the pills directly through the pharmacy. Diplomat would bill the patients' health plans. Those that have contracted with Pfizer would pay about a generic price for Lipitor, while plans that didn't would pay a higher price. Long term, Pfizer is kick-starting sales in fast-growing emerging markets like China, where the drug maker is betting that growing numbers of people diagnosed with high cholesterol will pay more for a so-called branded generic version of the drug than cheaper no-names. The effort may provide a new road map for selling prescription drugs, one no longer circumscribed by 20 years of patent protection and a 1984 law that sought to curb drug spending by authorizing generics following a patent's expiration. Johathan D. Rockoff Read much more at:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203710704577052350701638614.html

The vine has a long history in Southern Italy. Oenotria, the land of vines, is what the Greeks affectionately called the modern-day ‘Mezzogiorno,’ the southern part of the Italian boot, in addition to Sicily. (It is important to know that) Southern Italy was effectively a Greek colony in the centuries before Christ, so much so, that the south was known as ‘Magna Graecia,’ literally ‘Greater Greece.’ When they colonized Southern Italy they brought with them one of the markers of civilization, the vine. Technically, the Phoenicians were the first to bring the vine, but it was the Greeks who brought both viticulture and viniculture, essentially a wine-making culture. http://www.colonialspirits.com/wine/oenotria-part-1

Italian wine is wine produced in Italy, a country which is home to some of the oldest wine-producing regions in the world. Italy is the world's largest wine producer, responsible for approximately one-fifth of world wine production in 2005. Italian wine is exported largely around the world and has market share of over 10% in most Asian countries like India. More than 1 million vineyards are under cultivation. Etruscans and Greek settlers produced wine in the country long before the Romans started developing their own vineyards in the 2nd century BC. Roman grape-growing and winemaking was prolific and well-organized, pioneering large-scale production and storage techniques like barrel-making and bottling. Italy's classification system has four classes of wine, with two falling under the EU category Quality Wine Produced in a Specific Region (QWPSR) and two falling under the category of 'table wine'. The four classes are:
Table Wine:
Vino da Tavola (VDT) - Denotes simply that the wine is made in Italy. The label usually indicates a basic wine, made for local consumption.
Indicazione Geografica Tipica (IGT) - Denotes wine from a more specific region within Italy. This appellation was created in 1992 for wines that were considered to be of higher quality than simple table wines, but which did not conform to the strict wine laws for their region. Before the IGT was created, "Super Tuscan" wines such as Tignanello were labeled Vino da Tavola.
QWPSR:
Denominazione di Origine Controllata (DOC)
Denominazione di Origine Controllata e Garantita (DOCG)
Find a list of Italian wines and Italy's 20 wine regions at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_wine

December 5: Day of Ashura (Islam, 2011); St Nicholas's Eve in various European countries; Father's Day in Thailand
1484 – Pope Innocent VIII issued the papal bull Summis desiderantes affectibus, giving Dominican Inquisitor Heinrich Kramer explicit authority to prosecute witchcraft in Germany.
1952 – The "Great Smog" began in London and lasted for five days, causing 12,000 deaths and leading to the Clean Air Act 1956.
See a picture of The Karnataka High Court, the High Court of the Indian state of Karnataka, is housed in a building named Attara Kacheri, meaning "eighteen offices" and more at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page