Before Elvis
Presley and Elton John, there was Liberace, at one time the highest paid
entertainer in Las Vegas. Liberace was a
trained classical pianist who realized playing contemporary pop songs would
broaden his appeal to a much wider audience. His performances would be a mix of classical
and pop, topped off with his humorous interactions with the audience. In addition to his remarkable talent as a
pianist, Liberace attracted attention for his legendary flamboyant stage
costumes usually consisting of a jacket or cape adorned with thousands of
rhinestones and crystals. He took this
look one step further having his pianos and cars covered in jewels. A large assortment of Liberace's pianos, cars
and capes are on display at the Liberace Museum in Las Vegas. Liberace originally opened the museum himself
back in 1979 as a fundraising arm for his foundation, the Liberace Foundation
for the Performing and Creative Arts. Grateful
for the 17-year scholarship he was awarded as a child back in Wisconsin to
study classical piano, Liberace wanted to do his part to help future
generations of musicians by granting scholarships. When starting out his career in Las Vegas,
Liberace was earning $50,000 a week back in 1955 and from that point on would
earn an average of $5 million a year. He was listed in the Guiness Book of
World Records as the world's highest paid musician and pianist. This abundance of wealth enabled Liberace to
collect a vast amount of antiques, pianos, cars and homes. Nicknamed "The King of Bling", Liberace also loved large pieces of
jewelry and would wear extremely large rings even as he played the piano. He also owned the world's largest rhinestone,
a 115,000-karat stone received as a gift from the famous Swarovski crystal
maker in Austria, which is on display at the Liberace Museum. His flamboyant showmanship influenced Elvis
Presley as well as famous rock pianist, Elton John. Liberace and Elvis first met in 1956 in Las
Vegas when Liberace was a big star playing at the Riviera. Liberace told Elvis, "You're not going to
make it in Vegas unless you put some glitz in your costumes." Elvis took that to heart when he played Las
Vegas in the 1970s, and his jumpsuits and capes in turn influenced
Liberace. http://www.examiner.com/article/discover-liberace-the-king-of-bling-at-his-own-las-vegas-museum
Trina Yannicos NOTE that the Liberace Museum closed on Oct.
17, 2010 due to decreasing number of visitors leading to insufficient funding. See http://www.lasvegassun.com/blogs/kats-report/2010/sep/10/liberace-museum-closing-final-day-operation-longtm/ http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/18/us/18liberace.html?_r=0
A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg
onomastics (on-uh-MAS-tiks) nounThe study of proper names or of terms used in a specialized field. From Greek onomastikos (of names), from onomazein (to name), from onoma (name). Also see onomasticon.
Earliest documented use: 1904.
implacable (im-PLAK-uh-buhl, -PLAY-kuh-) adjective
Impossible to pacify or appease. From Latin placare (to quiet or appease). Ultimately from the Indo-European root plak- (to be flat), which is also the source of fluke, flake, flaw, plead, please, supple, supplicatory, and archipelago. Earliest documented use: 1522.
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Subject: Overmorrow Day after tomorrowThis exact concept is found in Norwegian as well. "Overimorgen" or "Overigår" for "the day before yesterday". It was interesting to learn that there is such a word as "overmorrow" in English -- I thought it didn't exist! In Swedish we have the equivalent "övermorgon" - a common word meaning the day after tomorrow. Mongolian has a single word for yesterday, today, and tomorrow as in English. But they also have a single word for "day after tomorrow" (nogoodor). My Mongolian friends and I settled for "tomorrow tomorrow". I'll be heading back to Mongolia soon and am delighted I can now provide a one-word equivalent for nogoodor. The French word for the day after tomorrow is après-demain, literally, "after-tomorrow". Le lendemain is the day after some event, while le surlendemain is two days after. 'Overmorrow' is indeed unusual in English, but its equivalent is perfectly common in Afrikaans, one of the official languages in South Africa. 'Tomorrow' in Afrikaans is 'more' (pronounced 'more-a') and 'oormôre' (above or over tomorrow) is used in everyday language for the rather clumsy 'the day after tomorrow', as is 'eergister' -- 'before yesterday'. I am Czech (living in the USA). Czech has "pozítří" which is derived from the word "zítra" (tomorrow) and means the day after tomorrow. "Po" is a frequently found prefix which means "after". In Yiddish we have ibermorgn, used all the time. In Hindi, the word for day after tomorrow is parso (परसों). German for day after tomorrow is "übermorgen". By the way, we sometimes even use "überübermorgen" for the second day after tomorrow, so *overovermorrow*? Even with its relatively small vocabulary, Hebrew also has a word for the day after tomorrow -- macharotyim. (מחרתיים). Like its English counterpart, it's derived from the word for tomorrow -- "mah-CHAR" (מחר) -- but would deconstruct literally as "a pair of tomorrows". From the attic of the English language into a frequently used Dutch word: we do say "over-morgen" when we mean "in two days" just as we say "eergisteren" when we mean "the day before yesterday". In Japanese the equivalent in everyday use (not obscure) is asatte.
Bryan,
Ohio Feb. 9, 2013 Ohio
Art Co. has created a heartfelt advertisement to honor the late Andre
Cassagnes, the 86-year-old French inventor of the famed Etch A Sketch toy who
died in Paris on Jan. 16. The ad shows
an upside down Etch A Sketch with a frown on its screen. Below the toy is an epitaph that states: Andre Cassagnes, Inventor of the Etch A
Sketch, 1926-2013. The company bought
the rights and has produced the toy ever since.
See picture of advertisement
at: http://www.toledoblade.com/Culture/2013/02/09/Ohio-Art-ad-pays-tribute-to-late-French-inventor-with-unique-advertisement.html
Andre Cassagnes
created what would become the Etch A Sketch in his garage in 1950. The drawing toy was made up of a joystick,
glass and aluminum powder. Initially
dubbed the Telecran, the toy was renamed L'Ecran Magique, or 'The Magic
Screen,' and made its debut at a toy fair in Nuremberg, Germany in 1959. The toy's "magic screen" was
inducted into the National Toy Hall of Fame in 1998, and it was added by
the Toy Industry Association to its "Century of Toys" list in
2003. http://www.cnn.com/2013/02/03/us/etch-a-sketch-creator-death
A generation ago, when the
poetry of PEnnsylvania and BUtterfield was about to give way to telephone
numbers in unpoetic strings, a critical question arose: Would people be able to remember all seven
digits long enough to dial them? And when, not long afterward, the dial gave
way to push buttons, new questions arose: round buttons, or square? How big should they
be? Most crucially, how should they be
arrayed? In a circle? A rectangle? An arc? For decades after World War II, these
questions were studied by a group of social scientists and engineers in New
Jersey led by one man, a Bell Labs industrial psychologist named John E.
Karlin. By all accounts a modest man
despite his variegated accomplishments (he had a doctorate in mathematical
psychology, was trained in electrical engineering and had been a professional
violinist), Mr. Karlin, who died on Jan. 28, at 94, was virtually unknown to
the general public. But his research,
along with that of his subordinates, quietly yet emphatically defined the
experience of using the telephone in the mid-20th century and afterward, from
ushering in all-digit dialing to casting the shape of the keypad on touch-tone
phones. And that keypad, in turn, would
inform the design of a spate of other everyday objects. Margalit Fox
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/09/business/john-e-karlin-who-led-the-way-to-all-digit-dialing-dies-at-94.html?ref=obituaries&_r=0
Abraham Lincoln (February 12, 1809–April 15, 1865) was the 16th President of the United
States, serving from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865. Lincoln successfully led the United States
through its greatest constitutional, military, and moral crisis – the American Civil War – preserving the Union. Reared in a poor family on the western
frontier, Lincoln was mostly self-educated, and became a country lawyer, a Whig Party leader, Illinois state legislator during
the 1830s, and a one-term member of the United States House of
Representatives during the 1840s. Lincoln
appears on the penny and the $5 bill, and on many postage stamps. He has been memorialized in many town, city,
and county names, including the capital
of Nebraska. The most famous and most visited memorials are the Lincoln
Memorial in Washington, D.C.; Lincoln's sculpture on Mount
Rushmore; Ford's
Theatre and Petersen House (where he died) in Washington and the
Abraham Lincoln
Presidential Library and Museum, located in Springfield, Illinois. Read much more and see images at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Lincoln
Text of Pope Benedict XVI's
resignation
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