11 December 2013

falstaffian

(fal-STAF-ee-uhn)

adjective

– Fat, jolly, and convivial.

ETYMOLOGY:
After Sir John Falstaff, a character in Shakespeare’s plays Henry IV (parts 1 & 2) and The Merry Wives of Windsor. Earliest documented use: 1809.

USAGE:
‘His hair was long and scruffy, his ties ludicrous and his manner jovial bordering on Falstaffian; a board meeting, for him, was a debate, punctuated by gales of his maniacal laughter’.
John Harvey-Jones; The Economist (London, UK); Jan 17, 2008.

Anagram

A fatal sniff

Today’s aphorism

Try everything at least twice.

– Shane Duran

On this day

11 December 1941 – Hitler and Mussolini declare war on the United States. The USA responds in kind.

11 December 1946 – establishment of UNICEF (United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund) to provide food and healthcare to children in countries devastated by World War II.

11 December 1918 – birthday of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Russian dissident writer, ‘The Gulag Archipelago‘, ‘One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich‘, ‘The First Circle‘.

11 December 1961 – America’s first direct involvement in the Vietnam civil war, when a US aircraft carrier arrives in Saigon.

11 December 1975 – The Cod War in Iceland continues when an Iceland gun boat fires on unarmed British fishing vessels. Iceland had expanded its fishing zone from 50nm to 200nm from its coast.

11 December 1979 – The Rhodesian government returns power of the country to Great Britain until democratic elections are held. Following the elections, Rhodesia is renamed Zimbabwe.

11 December 1997 – The Kyoto Protocol is agreed to by 150 countries to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in an effort to combat anthropogenic global warming.