Today’s WOTD – 3 November 2012

zeugma

[zoog-muh]

noun, Grammar, Rhetoric

– the use of a word to modify or govern two or more words when it is appropriate to only one of them or is appropriate to each but in a different way, as in to ‘wage war and peace’ or ‘On his fishing trip, he caught three trout and a cold’.

Today’s aphorism

‘When anger rises, think of the consequences’.

Confucius

On this day

3 November 1957 – Laika becomes the world’s first space-dog when the Soviet Union launches Sputnik II, sending the first ever living animal into space. Laika is the first animal to orbit the earth. She was a stray-dog which was chosen to undergo training with two other dogs, before being selected for the mission. In 2002 it was revealed that she died within hours of take-off from over-heating when one of the motors failed to separate from the payload.