12 December 2012

elysian

[i-LIZH-uhn]

adjective:

– Blissful; delightful.

ETYMOLOGY:
From Latin Elysium, from Greek elysion pedyon (Elysian plain/fields). In Greek mythology, Elysium (or the Elysian Fields) was the final resting place for the souls of heroes and the virtuous after their death. Earliest documented use: 1579.

USAGE:
‘Our neighbour stuck his head over the fence one arvo* and regaled me with Elysian illusions involving the company he worked for’.
Doug Anderson; Summer Job: Toilet Assembler; The Sydney Morning Herald (Australia); Jan 10, 2012
* Australian slang for ‘afternoon’

Today’s aphorism

‘I learned that fighting on the chess board could also have an impact on the political climate in the country’.

– Garry Kasparov

On this day

12 December 1901 – Italian inventor, Guglielmo Marconi sends the world’s first wireless transmission over 2,000 miles across the Atlantic Ocean from Poldhu, Cornwall, England to Newfoundland, Canada. The message he sent was the letter ‘s’ in morse code, represented by three dots …

12 December 1913 – the Mona Lisa is recovered in Florence, two years after being stolen from the Louvre in Paris.

12 December 1925 – the world’s first motel, the Milestone Mo-Tel, opens in San Luis Obispo, California. The motorists-hotel enabled visitors to park their cars outside their rooms.

12 December 1946 – John D. Rockefeller donates six blocks of Manhattan to the United Nations, which is now the site of UN Headquarters.

12 December 2003 – Keiko, the killer whale from the movie, ‘Free Willy’, dies in Norway.

12 December 2007 – International Chess Grand-Master, Garry Kasparov announces that he is withdrawing from running for the presidential election. Kasparov’s party, Other Russia, had faced difficulty in meeting the electoral requirements for supporters to meet in Moscow.