Lois Lenski was born in Springfield, Ohio on October 14, 1893.  She completed a Bachelor of Science degree in Education and received a teaching certificate from Ohio State University in 1915.  She attended Westminister School of Art in London, England.  In the following years, she moved to New York City, and later to London and Italy to study art and work as an assistant to artist Arthur Covey, whom she eventually married.  After becoming a successful illustrator, publishers encouraged her to write to go along with her drawings, and Lenski began to write and illustrate children’s books, starting with Skipping Village in 1927.  A noted author and artist of children's books, Lois Lenski received numerous literary awards for her work, including the John Newberry Medal for Strawberry Girl in 1946.  She illustrated all of her own works, and she illustrated 57 children's books by other authors.  http://www.lib.iup.edu/depts/speccol/All%20Finding%20Aids/Finding%20aids/MG%20or%20Col/MG16Lenski.pdf 

Tarmac (short for tarmacadam, or tar-penetration macadam) is a type of road surfacing material patented by Edgar Purnell Hooley in 1901.  The term is also used, with varying degrees of correctness, for a variety of other materials, including tar-grouted macadam, bituminous surface treatments and even modern asphalt concrete.  Babylon, in 625 BCE, was the first city to have its streets paved with tar.  More than 2,000 years later, John Loudon McAdam invented a road construction method called macadamisation.  These roads were adequate for use by horses and carriages or coaches, but they were very dusty and subject to erosion with heavy rain.  Later on, they did not hold up to higher speed motor vehicle use.  Methods to stabilise macadam roads with tar date back to at least 1834, when John Henry Cassell, operating from Cassell's Patent Lava Stone Works in Millwall, patented "Pitch Macadam".  This method involved spreading tar on the subgrade, then placing a typical macadam layer and then sealing the macadam with a mixture of tar and sand.  Tar-grouted macadam was also in use well before 1900, and involved scarifying the surface of an existing macadam pavement, spreading tar and re-compacting.  Although the use of tar in road construction was known in the 19th century, it was little used and was not introduced on a large scale until the motor car arrived on the scene in the early 20th century.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarmac

true blue  True blue, meaning faithful and steadfast, comes from the color of a fabric manufactured in Coventry, England during the Middle Ages.  The cloth had a reputation for having a durable blue dye which resisted fading.

blue blood  Blue bloods, the aristocrats, came into English from Spanish . The Spanish nobles of the Kingdom of Castile were stereotyped as having fair skin which revealed the blue veins underneath.
blue collar  The term “blue collar” in reference to trades jobs was in 1924 in a newspaper in Alden Iowa.  During the 1950s, blue collar came to refer to the millions of factory and trade workers.
blue ribbon  Blue ribbon originally referred to the ribbon worn below the left knee of a fourteenth-century British knight who had been admitted into the Most Noble Order of the Garter.  http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/08/04/1116727/-Origins-of-English-Blue

Use a baking stone for a great crust and oven spring.  They are heavy and take a long time to heat up but baking stones help create a brick oven atmosphere for the bread.  The crust does not crack on the bottom and the bread can bake through without over browning.  With or without a baking stone, I have found that heating the oven for 1/2 an hour with no stone or 1 hour with a stone is essential for professional-looking and tasting results.  Breads may need lower temperatures when your baking stone is properly preheated.  If you don't have an oven thermometer and want to fix an overly dark loaf today, turn your oven down by 25°F.  And I have the best results when I turn my oven to 450°F, not 500°F as they say in some books.  Let the bread cool before slicing.  Let it cool two hours before slicing. Find tips for getting the type of crust you want at:  http://germanfood.about.com/od/breadbaking101/a/bread-baking-101_2.htm

umbrage  noun

1.  displeasure or resentment; offence (in the phrase give or take umbrage)

2.  the foliage of trees, considered as providing shade
3.  Rare shadow or shade
4.  Archaic a shadow or semblance
[from Old French umbrage, from Latin umbrāticus relating to shade, from umbra shade, shadow]
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/umbrage

Iceland  is a Nordic European island country situated at the confluence of the North Atlantic and Arctic Oceans, on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge.  The country has a population of about 320,000 and a total area of 103,000 km² (40,000 sq mi), which makes it the most sparsely populated country in Europe.  The capital and largest city is Reykjavík, with the surrounding areas in the southwestern region of the country being home to two-thirds of the country's population.  Iceland is volcanically and geologically active.  The interior consists mainly of a plateau characterised by sand and lava fields, mountains and glaciers, while many glacial rivers flow to the sea through the lowlands.  Iceland is warmed by the Gulf Stream and has a temperate climate despite a high latitude just outside the Arctic Circle.   According to both Landnámabók and Íslendingabók, Celtic monks known as the Papar lived in Iceland before the Norse settlers arrived, possibly members of a Hiberno-Scottish mission.  Recent archaeological excavations have revealed the ruins of a cabin in Hafnir on the Reykjanes peninsula, and carbon dating indicates that it was abandoned somewhere between 770 and 880, suggesting that Iceland was populated well before 874.  The first known permanent Norse settler was Ingólfur Arnarson, who built his homestead in present-day Reykjavík in the year 874.  The Danish-Icelandic Act of Union, an agreement with Denmark signed on 1 December 1918 and valid for 25 years, recognized Iceland as a fully sovereign state in a personal union with Denmark.  On 31 December 1943, the Danish-Icelandic Act of Union expired after 25 years.  Beginning on 20 May 1944, Icelanders voted in a four-day plebiscite on whether to terminate the personal union with Denmark, abolish the monarchy, and establish a republic.  The vote was 97% in favour of ending the union and 95% in favour of the new republican constitution.  Iceland formally became a republic on 17 June 1944, with Sveinn Björnsson as its first president.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iceland

Eleven people have won all four major annual American entertainment awards, the Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony.  Doing so may be abbreviated EGOT, or sometimes GATE ("A" for "Academy").  These awards honor outstanding achievements in, respectively, television, music or other audio recording, film, and theater.  Winning all four awards has been referred to as winning the Grand Slam of show business.  The acronym EGOT was invented by actor Philip Michael Thomas.  It has since gained popularity because of its use as a plot device by the TV series 30 Rock.  A particular subset of the EGOT is the 'Triple Crown of Acting', for winning an award in the singular (non-group/ensemble/company) acting categories of all three of the Emmy, Oscar and Tony awards.   Of the 11 EGOT winners, two — Marvin Hamlisch and Richard Rodgers — have also won the Pulitzer Prize.  Find list of winners and link to Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony official sites at:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_who_have_won_Academy,_Emmy,_Grammy,_and_Tony_Awards

Oscar nominees  http://cdn.media.oscar.abc.com/media/2013/pdf/2013/nominees.pdf

Oscar winners  http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/oscar-winners-2013-full-list/story?id=18570339

Lists of highest-grossing films, highest-grossing films adjusted for inflation, high-grossing films by year, and highest-grossing franchises and film series  
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-grossing_films