Monday, September 11, 2017

The first recorded stop sign was installed in Detroit Michigan in 1915.  This sign had black letters on a white background printed on a sheet of metal.  In 1922 the increased use of the sign led to the development of a committee to establish a common design practice for traffic signs.  The committee recommended the use of distinctive design shapes for signs, and the now familiar octagon shape was selected for the stop sign.  It was black on white and set as 24" x24" in size due to the presses used to manufacture the signs. The 1924 meeting set the background color as yellow.  The committee was working under the support of AASHO and was rural dominated.  Their results were published in 1925 as the Manual and Specifications for the Manufacture, Display, and Erection of U.S. Standard Road Markers and Signs. the manual was known as the Rural Signing Manual.  At the same time another group, The National Conference on Street and Highway Safety formed and began to address several issues.  The NCSHS developed the "Urban Traffic Control Devices Manual" and in 1930 published the "Manual on Street Control Signs, Signals, and Markings."  This manual allowed 18"x18" stop signs and called for red letters on a yellow background.  Two committees working on uniform traffic control devices led to numerous conflicts.  In 1932, the two formed the Joint Committee on Uniform Traffic Control Devices and in 1935 the group published the first "Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices for Streets and Highways."  The MUTCD was originally mimeographed but demand for it was so high that it was typeset and printed in 1937.  Nine revised and updated editions of the manual have been published since 1935.  http://signalfan.freeservers.com/road%20signs/stopsign.htm

In the nineteenth century, a common signalling arrangement was a ball hoisted on a mast or pole.  These were for daylight communication with ships and later for railroads.  Two common ball colors used were red and white.  There were no industry-wide meanings for such signals; they depended on the rules of the port or road for definition.  By 1902, the Santa Fe had this system running on all its main lines, and by a decade later many railroads were using similar priority programs, often called "red ball" systems.  This railroad usage of red ball for fast transportation became widely known (since the railroads were important in that period).  As trucking became established, some companies took on the term in their names:  both a Red Ball Transit Company and a Red Ball Motor Freight were formed in the 1920s. Probably the most famous use of the term is the Red Ball Express, which was the truck routing system used in the Normandy campaign of World War II.  This symbolic use of red ball for "priority handling" later came to be applied to important criminal cases.

Bridge terminology is colorful.  Color may distinguish playing in a suit from playing no trump.  To "change the color" means to bid a new suit.  In non-English languages, the common term is color, not suit.  Originally there were four colors:  white, red, blue and black.  The associated symbols (spear, heart, rhombus, clover) became dominant in France and spread to other countries.  Red may mean vulnerable and white not vulnerable.  http://www.acbl.org/learn_page/bridge-terminology/

Famous for being famous is a pejorative term for someone who attains celebrity status for no particularly identifiable reason (as opposed to fame based on achievements, skill or talent) and appears to generate their own fame, or someone who achieves fame through a family or relationship association with an existing celebrity.  The term originates from an analysis of the media-dominated world called The Image:  A Guide to Pseudo-events in America (1961), by historian and social theorist Daniel J. Boorstin.  In it, he defined the celebrity as "a person who is known for his well-knownness".  He further argued that the graphic revolution in journalism and other forms of communication had severed fame from greatness, and that this severance hastened the decay of fame into mere notoriety.  The Washington Post writer Amy Argetsinger coined the term famesque to define actors, singers, or athletes whose fame is mostly (if not entirely) due to one's physical attractiveness and/or personal life, rather than actual talent and (if any) successful career accomplishments.  Celebutante is a portmanteau of the words "celebrity" and "débutante".  The male equivalent is sometimes spelled celebutant.  The term has been used to describe heiresses like Paris HiltonKim Kardashian and Nicole Richie in entertainment journalism.  The term has been traced back to a 1939 Walter Winchell society column in which he used the word to describe prominent society debutante Brenda Frazierhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Famous_for_being_famous

In the 15th century, English adopted the Old French word “grant” (ultimately from the Latin “grandis,” great or large) as “grand,” with the sense of not simply “large,” but also “imposing” or “great, famous, exalted or important.”  Over the next few centuries “grand” was frequently used in official titles (e.g., Grand Marshall), as well as in informal appellations honoring individuals (“grand old warrior,” etc.), and applied to events and things judged to be of great importance.  Eventually, “grand” took on a more general sense in the popular vocabulary of “impressively large” (e.g., Grand Canyon) or “noble.”  (The use of “grand” in “grandfather” and “grandmother,” however, is rooted in parallel terms in French, and actually predates the use of the “large” sort of “grand” in English by a century.)  Over the years, “grand” also acquired a variety of vernacular and slang senses, including “grand” meaning a large piano, as well as such forms as “grand prize” and “grand slam,” the latter once a term in whist or bridge, now used to mean “complete triumph” in any field.  The use of “grand” to mean “one thousand dollars” comes from American underworld slang, first appearing around 1915.  It was one of a number of slang terms, some still in use, for specific denominations of bills (or that amount of money), including “c-note” (or “century note”) for a one-hundred dollar bill (from the Roman numeral “C,” denoting 100).  A “sawbuck” was a ten-dollar bill, from the resemblance of the Roman numeral “X” (ten) that once appeared thereon to a sawhorse, and a twenty-dollar bill was known as, logically, a “double sawbuck.”  http://www.word-detective.com/2008/04/grand-one-thousand/

In the decades Vernon Jackson has called Dunleith home, residents of the Del. 9 corridor south of Wilmington, Delaware say that government has mostly overlooked their piece of New Castle County.  Now, as the steel and glass shell of the area’s new $30 million library has risen above the rest on the avenue, that perception is being cast in a different light.  “I never thought I’d see something like this hit my neighborhood,” said Jackson, whose called the corridor home most of his life.  New Castle County government will open the 40,000-square-foot library at the intersection of Del. 9 and Lambson Lane on September 12, 2017.  It comes after yeas of promises from government officials that the center can spark the revitalization not only of the corridor but also the lives of the 16,000 living in the 3-mile stretch between Wilmington and New Castle—where property values lag behind other parts of the county.  The Route 9 Library & Innovation Center is unique from other large county centers.  It’s a building where actual books will take second stage to banks of dozens of computers, a full-service kitchen and cafe, a theater and specialized rooms tailored to the elderly, those on the autism spectrum and children.  Local schools will also have a place to expand upon regular curriculum.  The county has partnered with the nearby Serviam Girls Academy for the school to integrate the library’s science, technology, engineering and technology resources into girls’ regular curriculum.  Upperclassmen from William Penn High School’s culinary arts program will use the library’s kitchen and cafe as part of their education as well.  Patti Piovoso, who owns Rosehill Plantery down the street from the library, said the new facility needs to help residents find better jobs.  “It’s a lot of money,” Piovoso said.  “But it can help build the community.  It needs blue-collar training, things that people can use to find a better job.”  The library will have programs for building a resume, interview skills and digging into what work is available.  A more thorough overview of programs at the new library and others across the county can be found on the county's website.  Xerxes Wilson  Read more and see pictures at  http://www.delawareonline.com/story/news/2017/09/04/30-million-library-del-9-open-next-week/626456001/

A bill to make September 11 a national day of mourning was introduced in the U.S. House on October 25, 2001, by Rep. Vito Fossella (R-NY) with 22 co-sponsors, among them eleven Democrats and eleven Republicans.  The bill requested that the President designate September 11 of each year as Patriot Day.  On September 4, 2002, President Bush used the authority of the resolution to proclaim September 11, 2002, as the first Patriot Day.  For the anniversary of the beginning of the American Revolution and the holiday celebrated in Massachusetts, Maine, and other states, see Patriots' Day. For the Quebec holiday, see National Patriots' Dayhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patriot_Day


http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1766  September 11, 2017  On this date in 1609, Henry Hudson discovered Manhattan Island and the indigenous people living there.  On this date in 1789, Alexander Hamilton was appointed the first United States Secretary of the Treasuryhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_11

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