| Thursday, August 7, 2008 |
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| Dr. Leakey and Four Old Friends |
SpotlightLouis Leakey, British archaeologist and anthropologist, was born on this date in 1903. Having grown up in Kenya, Leakey became interested in the study of African culture, and he unearthed fossils that showed that humans had been around for much longer than had been thought. His wife, Mary Leakey, found a hominid fossil (Zinjanthropus) believed to be 1,750,000 years old, in Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania, in 1959. Two years later, Leakey discovered another fossil (Homo habilis) at Olduvai, which he believed to be a more direct ancestor of Homo sapiens.
Quote"Anthropology holds up a great mirror to man and lets him look at himself in his infinite variety."
Question of the DayWhat is fossil fuel?
Fossil fuels were formed from prehistoric plants and animals that lived millions of years ago. When these living things died, they decomposed and got buried under the layers of mud, rock and sand. Millions of years passed and the dead plants and animals slowly decomposed into organic material and fossil fuels.
Word of the dayjumbo
from Mandingo. This word originated in Gambia and Mali
One of the biggest words in the English language is an import from Africa... in the phrase mumbo jumbo, introduced to English by one Francis Moore in a 1738 account of his African travels: "At Night, I was visited by a Mumbo Jumbo, an Idol, which is among the Mundingoes a kind of cunning Mystery.... This is a Thing invented by the Men to keep their Wives in awe"... Later travelers to West Africa have been unable to find any trace of this supposed custom.... By the early 19th century, jumbo was noted in a slang dictionary as referring to "a clumsy or unwieldy fellow." But it had a jumbo increase in popularity and meaning when P.T. Barnum bought Jumbo, an enormous elephant, from the London zoo in 1882.... Soon other animals and things were also called jumbo....
The United States, the melting pot par excellence for immigrants, has a similarly inclusionist language. This week we'll look at some words from other tongues that have been added to the pot... bon appetit!
Today's History
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| The 'Kon-Tiki' |
- Purple Heart: military decoration was created by George Washington (1782)
- Ulysses: a US appeals court ruled that the James Joyce novel was not obscene and therefore should not be banned (1934)
- Kon-Tiki: the balsa wood raft made it across the Pacific, crashing at the end on a reef in the Tuomotu Islands; this demonstrated that pre-Columbian South Americans could have reached and settled Polynesia (1947)
- Philippe Petit: French stuntman walked a tightrope between the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center (1974)
- US embassy bombings: simultaneous al-Qaeda attacks in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, killed over 200 people and wounded thousands (1998)
Today's Birthdays
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| David Duchovny |
- Alonso de Ercilla y Zúñiga (1533-1594): soldier and poet, La Araucana
- Mata Hari (1876-1917): dancer/spy
- B.J. Thomas (66): country/pop singer, "Raindrops Keep Fallin' On My Head"; also, musicians Bruce Dickinson (50) and Marcus Roberts (44)
- Garrison Keillor (66): writer/host of A Prairie Home Companion
- David Duchovny (48): actor, The X-Files; also, performers Stan Freberg (82), Wayne Knight (53) and Charlize Theron (33)
- Jimmy Wales (42): founder of Wikipedia
- Sidney Crosby (21): center for Pittsburgh Penguins; runners Abebe Bikila (1932-1973) and Alberto Salazar (50) share this birth date
