4 January 2014

scintilla

[sin-til-uh] /help/luna/Spell_pron_key.htmlShow IPA
noun
a minute particle; spark; trace: not a scintilla of remorse.

Origin:
1685–95; < Latin: spark

Anagram

lilac nits
can I still

Today’s aphorism

Kids don’t remember what you tried to teach them. They remember what you are.

– Jim Henson

On this day

4 January 1903 – Thomas Edison electrocutes an elephant to prove the dangers of ‘alternating current’ electricity. He had previously electrocuted stray cats and dogs and even horses and cows. He snidely referred to it as ‘getting Westinghoused’. Topsy, the elephant, had squashed 4 trainers at the Luna Park Zoo on Coney Island, so the zoo had decided to hang her, before someone suggested she ‘ride the lightning’. More on this at http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2008/01/dayintech_0104

4 January 1965 – death of Thomas Stearns Eliot (T.S. Eliot), poet, playwright, publisher, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, described as ‘arguably the most important English language poet of the 20th century’. Wrote ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock‘, ‘The Waste Land‘, ‘Ash Wednesday‘, ‘The Hollow Men‘. Born 26 September 1888.