Humans speak many languages, but we may be united in our confusion.  A new study examined languages from around the world and discovered what they say could be a universal word:  "Huh?"  Researchers traveled to cities and remote villages on five continents, visiting native speakers of 10 very different languages.  Their nearly 200 recordings of casual conversations revealed that there are versions of "Huh?" in every language they studied — and they sound remarkably similar.  For this study, scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in the Netherlands set out to show that "Huh?" had earned the status of a full-fledged word, though an admittedly odd one.  They also wanted to see whether other languages had a similar word with a similar function.  The problem is that "Huh?" often seems like such an unimportant feature of language that it's not well documented, said Nick Enfield, a linguistic anthropologist who worked on the study.  The word doesn't crop up much in linguistic literature because researchers who record speakers of remote languages often ignore such forgettable filler.  The scientists knew that to find out whether "Huh?" had counterparts in other languages, they'd have to go looking themselves.  So they headed to remote villages in Ecuador, Laos, Ghana and Australia and spent weeks getting acquainted with the locals.  They felt they had to gain people's trust before they could record natural, casual conversations — and perhaps catch a few instances of "Huh?" in its natural environment.  The "Huh?"-hunters also visited family homes in Italy, Russia and Taiwan as well as laboratories in Spain and the Netherlands.  The languages studied were Cha'palaa, Dutch, Icelandic, Italian, Lao, Mandarin Chinese, Murriny Patha, Russian, Siwu and Spanish. (English wasn't included in the study.)  Across these languages, they found a remarkable similarity among the "Huhs?"  All the words had a single syllable, and they were typically limited to a low-front vowel, something akin to an "ah" or an "eh."  Sometimes this simple word started with a consonant, as does the English "Huh?" or the Dutch "Heh?"  (Spellings are approximate.)  Across all 10 languages, there were at least 64 simple consonants to choose from, but the word always started with an H or a glottal stop — the sound in the middle of the English "uh-oh."  Amina Khan  http://www.latimes.com/science/la-sci-huh-20131109,0,4266398.story#axzz2kAY2PhnV 

‘Stirring the Possum’ is an Aussie colloquialism or slang.  G.A. Wilkes’ A Dictionary Of Australian Colloquialisms now in it’s fourth edition, first published in 1978 reads: 

‘Stir-ring-the-Pos-sum’ To liven things up, create a disturbance; raise issues that others wish left dormant.   The term was used about the Mayan Calendar not leading to the end of the world in an article by Nicole Alexander titled ‘Stirring the possum; Mayan style’.  Nicole, an Australian storyteller, comes to the defence of the Mayans pointing out quite sensibly that “Mayans… have no idea about our doomsday approach to their calendar”.  There’s also a couple of books:  Stir the possum :  verse poetry, humour Australiana by John Mullally and Irene Patricia Sexton published in 1975.  The other Stirring the possum:  Legal aid and consumer interest by Jeffery Michael Giddings and published by Griffith University in 2000.  They’re so different in nature that you couldn’t make this stuff up.  http://possumtales.wordpress.com/2013/02/23/stirring-the-possum/ 

A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg  Yiddish (literally, Jewish) is a language without a country.  (Israel's official languages are Hebrew and Arabic).  It started out as the language of the Ashkenazi Jews (from Germany).  The language has German as its base, includes a generous sprinkling of words from Hebrew and other languages, and is written in an alphabet based on Hebrew.

bupkis  (BUHP-kis)  noun  Absolutely nothing; worthless.  From Yiddish, short for kozebubkes (goat droppings), from bub/bob (bean).  Earliest documented use:  1937.   The word is also spelled as bobkes, bubkes, bopkes, bupkes, bupkus, bubkis, bubkes, etc.  The English equivalent of the term is beans, as in:  He doesn't know beans about computers.

schnozzle  (SHNOZ-ul) noun  A nose, especially a large one.   From Yiddish shnoytsl, diminutive of shnoyts (snout), from German Schnauze (snout), which also gave us the name of the dog breed schnauzer.  Earliest documented use:  1930.

schmo or schmoe or shmo  (shmo)  noun  A stupid, boring, or obnoxious person.   A truncated form of schmuck (an idiot), from Yiddish schmok (pen is).  Earliest documented use:  1948.  The word is also used in the phrase Joe Schmo, as a more colorful synonym for John Doe.

Find the youngest to oldest U.S. Presidents.  First five and last five listed here.

Theodore Roosevelt (42 years, 10 months, 18 days)
John F. Kennedy (43 years, 7 months, 22 days)
Bill Clinton (46 years, 5 months, 1 day)
Ulysses S. Grant (46 years, 10 months, 5 days)
Barack Obama (47 years, 5 months, 16 days)
Zachary Taylor (64 years, 3 months, 8 days)
George H. W. Bush (64 years, 7 months, 8 days)
James Buchanan (65 years, 10 months, 9 days)
William H. Harrison (68 years, 0 months, 23 days)
Ronald Reagan (69 years, 11 months, 14 days)  by Jennifer Rosenberg  http://history1900s.about.com/od/worldleaders/a/youngpresidents.htm

Presidential assassinations

Abraham Lincoln (1865)
James Garfield (1881)
William McKinley (1901)
John F. Kennedy (1963)

Presidential assassination attempts

Andrew Jackson (1835)
Theodore Roosevelt (1912) (as a Presidential candidate and former President)
Franklin D. Roosevelt (1933) (as President-elect)
Harry S Truman (1950)
Gerald Ford (1975)
Ronald Reagan (1981)  Link to many resources at http://www.presidentsusa.net/assassinations.html

Google Inc on Nov. 14, 2013 won dismissal of a long-running lawsuit by authors who accused the Internet search company of digitally copying millions of books for an online library without permission.  U.S. Circuit Judge Denny Chin in Manhattan accepted Google's argument that its scanning of more than 20 million books, and making "snippets" of text available online, constituted "fair use" under U.S. copyright law.  The decision, if it survives an expected appeal, would let Google continue expanding the library, which it said helps readers find books they might not otherwise locate.  It is also turning point for litigation that began in 2005, when authors and publishers sued.  Google has estimated it could owe more than $3 billion if the Authors Guild, an advocacy group that demanded $750 for each scanned book, prevailed.  The case is Authors Guild Inc et al v. Google Inc, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, No. 05-08136. http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/11/14/us-google-books-idUSBRE9AD0TT20131114