31 December 2015

adoxography

noun

– fine writing in praise of trivial or base subjects;

Examples

– Elizabethan schoolboys were taught adoxography, the art of eruditely praising worthless things

– adoxography is particularly useful to lawyers

Anagram

parody hag ox

Today’s quote

A man can fail many times, but he isn’t a failure until he begins to blame someone else.

– John Burroughs

On this day

31 December – the seventh day of the 12 days of Christmas (Western Christianity).

31 December 1948 – birth of Disco star, Donna Summer. Died 17 May 2012.

31 December 1967 – Evel Knievel unsuccessfully attempts a motorcycle jump over the fountains of Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas. He received concussion and numerous broken bones, which left him in a coma for 29 days.

31 December 2007 – Murder statistics in the United States reveal that murder rate is 0.055 per head of population, which is slightly less than it was in 1947, when the rate was 0.0551. The population in 1947 was 145,000,000 and there were 8,000 murders. In 2007, the population was 300,000,000 and there were 16,500 murders.