On September 6, 1620, the Mayflower departed from Plymouth, England, and headed for America.  By the time the Pilgrims had left England, they had already been living onboard the ships for nearly a month and a half.  The voyage itself across the Atlantic Ocean took 66 days, from their departure on September 6, until Cape Cod was sighted on 9 November 1620.  The Pilgrims intended to land in Northern Virginia, which at the time included the region as far north as the Hudson River in the modern State of New York.  The Hudson River, in fact, was their originally intended destination.  They had received good reports on this region while in the Netherlands.  All things considered, the Mayflower was almost right on target, missing the Hudson River by just a few degrees.  http://mayflowerhistory.com/voyage 

Try this:  Hum your favorite song for the next 20 seconds.  Now, don't you feel better?  In fact, there's no better way to calm your mind and boost your spirits than by humming a happy tune.  Plus, evidence suggests that the simple act of humming may help keep your sinuses healthy.  Research shows that humming can improve airflow between the sinuses and the nasal cavity.  This, in turn, may help protect the health of your sinuses.  Here's how:  Humming creates turbulence in the air, which pushes it out more forcefully than quiet breathing.  Researchers have studied this effect by measuring a gas produced in the sinuses, nitric oxide.  In healthy individuals, humming dramatically increases the amount of nitric oxide released upon exhaling, which shows that air is moving out of the sinuses well.  Linda Wasmer Andrews  https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/minding-the-body/201111/hum-happy-tune-wellness

The word humdrum is an example of grammatical reduplication or repetitive rhyming, much like other informal words such as itsy-bitsy, okey-dokey, hoity-toity and namby-pamby.  Humdrum actually means a boring, dull or monotonous state of being, with little hope of spontaneity or excitement.  The expression is very similar to the informal word ho-hum, which also describes a boring or dull set of circumstances.   Michael Pollick  https://www.languagehumanities.org/what-does-hum 

A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg

listicle  (LIS-ti-kuhl)  noun  An article or other piece of writing structured in the form of a list.  A blend of list + article. From Old English liste (border, strip) and Latin articulus (small joint), from artus (joint).  Earliest documented use:  2007.  Clickbaits often lead to listicles.

acquihire  (AK-wi-hy-uhr)  noun  The purchase of a company for its talent rather than its products or services.  verb tr.: To buy a company in this manner.  Coined by Rex Hammock as a combination of acquire + hire.  From Latin quaerere (to seek, get) and Old English hyrian (to hire).  Earliest documented use:  2005.

In early 1841, Edgar Allan Poe was working as an editor for Graham’s Magazine, a popular Philadelphia-based publication, when he submitted to the magazine a story he had been working on, called “Murders in the Rue Trianon.”  In the piece, a gruesome double-murder has taken place in a home along the street in Paris.  Several witnesses confirm having heard voices in the house, but no one can agree on what language one of the speakers may have been using.  There are several more clues, each more confusing than the next.  The neighbors are frightened.  The police are baffled.  But C. Auguste Dupin, chevalier and rare-book aficionado, solves the mystery at home one day after reading the details in the paper, and tells his solution to a friend of his (who is narrating the story).  Before Poe finalized the story, he changed the name of the ill-fated street from Rue Trianon to “Rue Morgue,” to make the whole affair seem a bit more macabre. Literary Hub April 17, 2022   

Fungible things are items that can be easily replaced with another item that is practically the same, such as wood or paper currency.  Often, whether or not an item is fungible will impact how damages will be calculated for breaches of contract or the destruction of an item.  https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/fungible_things#:~:text=Fungible%20things%20are%20items%20that,the%20destruction%20of%20an%20item. 

On June 23, 1868, a patent was issued to Milwaukee printer Christopher Sholes for the “type-writer,” a little machine that, as Dan Piepenbring wrote, “looks like a miniature piano crossed with a clock and/or a phonograph and/or a kitchen table.”  Though Sholes would eventually invent the QWERTY keyboard, in the first iteration, the keys were laid out like this:   

3 5 7 9 N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

2 4 6 8 . A B C D E F G H I J K L M

In their original patent application, the diagram showed 21 keys, but the prototype they submitted held only 11.  (Inventors were required to send scale models along with their applications.)  Another fun twist:  the keys were originally piano keys.   https://link.lithub.com/view/602ea8ce180f243d6536ae8dgqpvy.2enk/83b903a3

The comedy film Spaceballs premiered on June 24 35 years ago in 1987.  A parody of the original Star Wars trilogy, in a famous scene the character Yogurt reveals he is involved in the merchandising of the film itself.  Wiktionary 

A rare, five-planet alignment will peak on June 24, allowing a spectacular viewing of Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn as they line up in planetary order.  The event began at the beginning of June and has continued to get brighter and easier to see as the month has progressed, according to Diana Hannikainen, observing editor of Sky & Telescope.  A waning crescent moon will be joining the party between Venus and Mars on Friday, adding another celestial object to the lineup. The moon will represent the Earth's relative position in the alignment, meaning this is where our planet will appear in the planetary order.  Megan Marples and Ashley Strickland  https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/23/world/five-planet-alignment-peak-june-scn/index.html  

http://librariansmuse.blogpost.com  Issue 2535  June 24, 2022