TODAY IN HISTORY ― MAY 11

May 11 is the 131st day of the year (132nd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 234 days remaining until the end of the year. 

NATIONAL TWILIGHT ZONE DAY 

868 – A copy of the Diamond Sutra is printed in China, making it the oldest known dated printed book. 

1310 – In France, fifty-four members of the Knights Templar are burned at the stake as heretics. The Knights were originally tasked to protect pilgrims along the roads to Jerusalem but they eventually became an elite fighting force in the Crusades known for their propensity not to retreat or surrender. Eventually, their rules of secrecy, their power, privileges and their wealth, made them vulnerable to the King of France’s accusations, and with the Pope’s unsuccessful attempts to prevent it, their destruction.

1647 – Peter Stuyvesant arrives in New Amsterdam to replace Willem Kieft as Director-General of New Netherland, the Dutch colonial settlement in present-day New York City.

1792 – Captain Robert Gray becomes the first documented white person to sail into the Columbia River.

1846 – President James K. Polk asked for and received a Declaration of War against Mexico, starting the Mexican–American War

1862 – American Civil War: The ironclad CSS Virginia is scuttled in the James River northwest of Norfolk, Virginia.

1880 – Seven people are killed in the Mussel Slough Tragedy, a gun battle in California. The exact history of the incident has been the source of some disagreement, largely because popular anti-railroad sentiment in the 1880s made the incident to be a clear example of corrupt and cold-blooded corporate greed.

1889 – An attack upon a U.S. Army paymaster and escort results in the theft of over $28,000 and the award of two Medals of Honor. 

1894 – Pullman Strike: The strike and boycott shut down much of the nation's freight and passenger traffic west of Detroit, Michigan. The conflict began in Pullman, Chicago, on May 11 when nearly 4,000 factory employees of the Pullman Company began a wildcat strike in response to recent reductions in wages. They had not yet formed a union. Founded in 1893 byEugene V. Debs, the ARU was an organization of unskilled railroad workers. Debs brought in ARU organizers to Pullman and signed up many of the disgruntled factory workers. When the Pullman Company refused recognition of the ARU or any negotiations, ARU called a strike against the factory, but it showed no sign of success. To win the strike, Debs decided to stop the movement of Pullman cars on railroads. The over-the-rail Pullman employees(such as conductors and porters) did not go on strike.

1907 – Thirty-two Shriners are killed when their chartered train derails at a switch near Surf Depot in Lompoc, California.

1910 – An act of the U.S. Congress establishes Glacier National Park in Montana.

1918 – The Mountainous Republic of the Northern Caucasus is officially established.

1944 – World War II: The Allies begin a major offensive against the Axis Powers on the Gustav Line in Italy.

1945 – World War II: Off the coast of Okinawa, the aircraft carrier USS Bunker Hill (CV-17) is hit by two kamikazes, killing 346 of its crew. Although badly damaged, the ship is able to return to the U.S. under its own power.

1949 – Siam officially changes its name to Thailand for the second time. The name had been in use since 1939 but was reverted in 1945.

1953 – The 1953 Waco tornado outbreak: An F5 tornado hits downtown Waco, Texas, killing 114.

1960 – In Buenos Aires, Argentina, four Israeli Mossad agents capture fugitive Nazi Adolf Eichmann who is living under the alias of Ricardo Klement. On 1 March 1960 Harel dispatched to Buenos Aires the Shin Bet chief interrogator Zvi Aharoni, who over the course of weeks of investigation was able to confirm the identity of the fugitive. As Argentina had a history of turning down extradition requests for Nazi criminals, Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion made the decision that Eichmann should be captured rather than extradited, and brought to Israel for trial. Harel himself arrived in person in May 1960 to oversee the capture. Mossad operative Rafi Eitan was named leader of the eight-man team, most of whom were Shin Bet agents. Eichmann was hanged at a prison in Ramla, shortly after midnight on 31 May 1962. The execution was attended by a small group of officials, four journalists, and Canadian clergyman William Lovell Hull (who had been his spiritual counselor while in prison).

1963 – Racist bombings in Birmingham, Alabama disrupt nonviolence in the Birmingham campaign and precipitate a crisis involving federal troops.

1970 – The Lubbock tornado, a F5 tornado, hits Lubbock, Texas, killing 26 and causing $250 million in damage. At 8:10PM, an off-duty Lubbock police officer spotted a funnel cloud on the east side of the city, and grapefruit-size hail was reported. At 8:15, local radar indicated a hook echo and a tornado warning was issued for Lubbock and Crosby counties, and the first tornado to strike the city touched down seven miles south of Lubbock Municipal Airport, near the intersection of Quirt Avenue and Broadway. Since it was in a relatively sparsely populated area of the city, this first tornado caused little significant damage; however, reports of damaging hail continued to come in from around the city. At 9:15, tornado sirens in Idalou were sounded, and by 9:30 baseball-sized hail was falling in the northeastern sector of Lubbock. At about 9:35PM, a second and much more significant tornado touched down near the campus of Texas Tech University, snapping light poles at Jones Stadium, home of the Red Raider football team, then began to track northeast, carving a path of destruction that at its peak reached almost two miles in width right through the heart of the city. The devastating twister tore through several densely populated residential areas before slicing through downtown, dealing a direct blow to the First National Bank building and the Great Plains Life building. The tornado then moved north toward the airport, where at 10:00PM, anemometers were already reading winds of 77 knots (approximately 90 miles per hour (140 km/h). At 9:46, power failed at the Lubbock Civil Defense headquarters, and three minutes later, the local weather bureau lost power and its personnel took shelter from the tornado, which was now bearing down on the area and passed over the Weather Bureau building at 10:03PM.

1973 – Citing government misconduct, Daniel Ellsberg has charges for his involvement in releasing the Pentagon Papers to The New York Times dismissed.

1987 – Klaus Barbie (the "Butcher of Lyon") goes on trial in Lyon for war crimes committed during World War II.

1995 – More than 170 countries extend the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty indefinitely and without conditions.

1996 – The 1996 Mount Everest disaster: on a single day eight people die during summit attempts on Mount Everest. Numerous climbers, including multiple large teams as well as some small partnerships, and even some soloists, were high on Everest during the storm. While climbers died on both the North Face and South Col approaches, the events on the South Col are better known. Journalist Jon Krakauer, on assignment from Outside magazine, was in a party led by guide Rob Hall that lost four climbers on the south side; he afterwards published the bestseller Into Thin Air (1997), which related his experience.

1997 – Deep Blue, a chess-playing supercomputer, defeats Garry Kasparov in the last game of the rematch, becoming the first computer to beat a world-champion chess player in a classic match format.

2000 – The Second Chechen War: Chechen separatists ambush Russian paramilitary forces in the Republic of Ingushetia.

2010 – David Cameron becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom following talks between the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats to form the UK's first coalition government since World War II after elections produced a hung parliament.

2013 – Fifty-two people are killed in a bombing in Reyhanlı, Turkey.

2014 – Fifteen people are killed and 46 injured in Kinshasa in a stampede caused by tear gas being thrown into the stand by police officers attempting to defuse a hostile incident.


BORN TODAY 

1799 – John Lowell, Jr., American businessman and philanthropist, founded Lowell Institute (d. 1836)

1881 – Theodore von Kármán, Hungarian-American mathematician, physicist, and engineer (d. 1963)

1888 – Irving Berlin (born, Israel Isidore Baline), Belarusian-American pianist and composer (d. 1989)

1918 – Richard Phillips Feynman, American physicist and engineer, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1988)

1933 – Louis Farrakhan, American religious leader, Nation of Islam

1934 – Arthur Labatt, Canadian businessman and academic, Labatt Brewery

1946 – Robert Jarvik, American cardiologist, developed the Artificial heart

From Wikipedia and Google (images), ex as noted.   

CONFUSING MOVIE ENDINGS EXPLAINED ― VANILLA SKY (2001)

Vanilla Sky was definitely not the movie Cameron Crowe fans were expecting to see when they filed into theaters in December of 2001—especially not with Crowe's Jerry Maguire leading man Tom Cruise looming large on the poster. Instead of a feelgood romance or a fun coming-of-age story, they got a moody, elliptical remake of a hit Spanish film. A feckless playboy (Cruise) suffers near-death and disfigurement after his relationship with his new girlfriend (Penélope Cruz) plunges his ex-lover (Cameron Diaz) into homicidal obsession. He plunges into depression, has his face surgically restored, and then his life really starts to go haywire. 

Ultimately, viewers are told that much of what they've seen is a lucid dream in Cruise's brain, which has been held in cryonic stasis for more than 100 years, and that the more troubling elements of the narrative are the result of a glitch. He's given the choice to either reboot the dream or exit it once and for all by jumping off a building and being brought back to life. He jumps—and the last shot is of Cruise's character opening his eyes, starting his life over again.

There are lots of interpretations for all this, some of which were supplied by Crowe himself in the commentary track for the DVD—but the correct one might just be accepting what you see onscreen as the actual events of the story. Crowe seemed to lean that direction while talking with Film School Rejects about Vanilla Sky's unused alternate ending:

"You want people to understand what you're going for, so the question is, looking at both endings: Did the pendulum swing too much in the direction of us explaining stuff? I think it did. The original ending was more open-ended, a little less explained."

From Looper.com 

Revisiting Cameron Crowe’s Vanilla Sky

Cameron Crowe's most divisive film by distance. Carley's look back at his work tackles Vanilla Sky...

"I'll tell you in another life, when we are both cats." - Sofia

The Recap

After the financial success of Jerry Maguire and the critical success of Almost Famous, it seems strange to think that Cameron Crowe's next project would be a re-make of an already successful Spanish movie Abre Los Ojos (Open Your Eyes), but with power star Tom Cruise at the helm. Nothing could go wrong, right?

New Yorker David Aames (Tom Cruise) is a handsome, wealthy playboy who is head of a publishing company and enjoys living life to the max. At a party one evening, David's friend Brian (Jason Lee) introduces him to Sofia (Penelope Cruz) and the two hit it off immediately, much to the annoyance of his ex-girlfriend Julianna (Cameron Diaz).

A few days after the party Julianna offers David a ride in her car and lets him know that, if she can't have, him nobody can, and crashes the car off a bridge, killing her instantly and disfiguring David's face. Unable to face the world as he now is, David wears a mask and falls into a deep depression.

On a night out with Sofia and Brian he gets so drunk the two of them leave him to wallow in his own self pity and he passes out on the street.

The next morning, things begin to start looking up as Sofia turns up at David's apartment, determined to get him back on track. From this point romance blossoms and the two begin a steady relationship. David is also able to get plastic surgery on his face to make him look exactly as he did before the accident. However, strange things soon begin to happen to David. He has hallucinations of his face still being disfigured, when travelling through the city he comes across a completely empty Times Square and, most alarmingly, he keeps coming across a gentleman who keeps telling him he has the power to control the world.

After one particularly powerful hallucination, David goes to see Sofia, only to find her sitting and talking to Julianna. As he looks around the apartment, all the pictures of Sofia and himself have been replaced by pictures of him and Julianna and in a fit of rage he strangles her, only to discover he has strangled Sofia.

He is arrested and, due to suffering from amnesia, he is placed under the care of Dr. Curtis McCabe (Kurt Russell). As the two delve deeper into his past, they discover a link with a company called Life Extension. On a visit there they discover that the company deal in cryonics and that they place their patients in a lucid dream state while, in reality, they are frozen in time awaiting a cure of their various ailments to be made. Realising that he is in his own lucid dream state, David escapes the main company office and is directed to an elevator by a gentleman who is Tech Support for the company.

He explains, in reality, after David had passed out drunk on the evening out with Sofia and Brian, he never saw her again and instead opted to be put into the lucid dream state and live under the vanilla sky his mother used to talk about. He has been frozen for 150 years and it was a malfunction in the system that caused his perfect dream to become a nightmare.

As the two reach their destination, Tech Support gives David a choice. He can live in his lucid dream world and be happy with Sofia forever, or he can take a leap of faith and return to reality. Choosing the latter, David jumps off the building and as he hits the ground a voice tells him to wake up and he slowly opens his eyes back again in the real world.

Thoughts & Reaction

The first thing I want to state before I get into anything about this movie is the fact I am not a fan of remakes. If something is a good enough idea, has been successful and has found its own fanbase, there is no need to try and improve on it. It works as it is and should be left well enough alone.

The re-make/re-imagining trend that seems to be devouring the film industry at the moment is one that annoys me to the brink of turning into the Hulk (you wouldn't like me when I'm angry) and I do sometimes think that if anybody came up with an original idea I might actually die of shock, but that is the way of the world and, like many other movie fans, I just have to deal with it. Rant over.

Vanilla Sky is a bit of funny film to dissect and discuss. Financially it was a huge success (a fact which was helped by the Cruise/Cruz romance that developed on set) and introduced the majority of the English speaking world to Penelope Cruz. It was also a brave movie as the ideas raised in it were pretty out there, which I also think was its greatest hindrance when unleashed on the general public, as they were expecting and were, indeed, marketed a more run of the mill thriller type movie.

Casting Tom Cruise in the lead role also probably didn't help matters as, by the time the movie was released in 2001, he was thought of more of an action hero thanks to his work on the Mission Impossible films rather than the more dramatic roles of his past. Saying that, however, Cruise does almost sell the role of the disturbed protagonist, although it does feel for the first quarter of the movie he is just playing himself and he never really does manage to reach to the darker depths of the character as his predecessor did in the original movie.

Penelope Cruz must have felt more than a sense of déjà vu when filming began on this movie, having lived it all before, but she has an admirable go at the role and never loses focus on the character. Mixed reaction to the film almost put pay to her Hollywood dreams, but after getting herself on the map with this movie, she managed to pick her roles well and could be described as one of the best actresses in Hollywood today.

The biggest surprise in this movie for me was Cameron Diaz. Again, another thing I will admit is that I am not her biggest fan and when I see her name over the title of a movie I let out a bit of an inward groan, but she is fantastic as the jilted, jealous lover and I really wish she would plump for more of these type of roles than the comedy ones she always seems to find herself in. For another example of her on stellar form, check out The Last Supper, a truly great movie.

Visually, the movie looks good, but it is more or less a clone of its predecessor with some scenes, including clothing and set-up, lifted from one to the other. Although described by Crowe as a very close remake, I would actually say it was more of a carbon copy. Nevertheless, the scene when David encounters an empty Times Square could put goosebumps on the most critical of viewers.

Script-wise, again, the two movies are interlinked, although it does feel that Crowe didn't go as dark as his source material. A lot of viewers of the film were left with a bit of a WTF moment as the credits rolled and Crowe himself states that there are various interpretations of how the movie ended.

Firstly, that Tech support were telling the truth and everything was a lucid dream, that the entire film was a dream while David was left in a coma after the accident, that nothing was, in fact, real and rather it was a plot of a book David's friend Brian was writing. Or finally, the entire film is just a normal dream. Whatever your thoughts on the subject there is no simple answer as to what really happened.

When Vanilla Sky was released, critics were split down the middle by it, some loved it and some just saw it as a vanity project for Cruise who not only starred but produced it. Some also saw it as a waste of Crowe's talent, stating his own original ideas were superior. Nevertheless, it has become a bit of a cult movie and found a more loving home on DVD.

From DenofGeek

SLANG PHRASES PEOPLE USED IN THE 1920s ― 5-1

POSTED BY SAMEEN 

It’s not just kids these days that use slang. People have been using slang and colloquial speech since the invention of the spoken word (which was a very, very long time ago). Possibly some of the greatest slang terms in the English language came to us from the roaring twenties. Known for excess, lavishness, and lots of over the top parties, people in the twenties developed their own method of communication. These days many of those phrases and slang terms have been made popular by movies, cinema, and literature, and some of them have even found their way back into everyday usage. It’s always fun, however, to see where the words you are using come from and why people use them. Many terms and words we use today are derived from other terms and words used in the past. Many of these words, as you’ll soon see, reflect the culture of the decade, and if anything they show that inflation has definitely runs its course (a ten cent box is a taxi!). For the most part, though, these words are somewhat comical even though many of them have fallen out of popular usage, reading their meanings can be quite entertaining! These are 25 super cool slang phrases people used in the 20s.


5 ― Ten Cent Box


Source: wikipedia, Image: wikipedia

Meaning: A taxi



4 ― Bimbo


Source: wikipedia, Image: wikipedia

Meaning: A tough guy


3 ― Handcuff


Source: wikipedia, Image: wikipedia

Meaning: Engangement ring


2 ― Bee's Knees


Source: wikipedia, Image: freestockphotos.biz

Meaning: The best


1 Jake

Source: wikipedia, Image: pixabay

Meaning: Everything is ok (everything is jake)


From list25

TODAY IN HISTORY ― MAY 10

May 10 is the 130th day of the year (131st in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 235 days remaining until the end of the year.

NATIONAL LIPID DAY 

28 BCE – A sunspot is observed by Han dynasty astronomers during the reign of Emperor Cheng of Han, one of the earliest dated sunspot observations in China. 

1534 – French explorer Jacques Cartier visits Newfoundland.  

1773 – The Parliament of Great Britain passes the Tea Act, designed to save the British East India Company by granting it a monopoly on the North American tea trade.

1774 – Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette become King and Queen of France. The first part of Louis' reign was marked by attempts to reform France in accordance with Enlightenment ideals. These included efforts to abolish serfdom, remove the taille, and increase tolerance toward non-Catholics. The French nobility reacted to the proposed reforms with hostility, and successfully opposed their implementation. Louis was guillotined on January 21, 1793 at part of the French Revolution. 

1775 – American Revolutionary War: A small Colonial militia led by Ethan Allen and Colonel Benedict Arnold captures Fort Ticonderoga on Lake Champlain, NY.

1775 – American Revolutionary War: Representatives from the Thirteen Colonies begin the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia. The second Congress managed the colonial war effort, and moved incrementally towards independence, adopting the United States Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. By raising armies, directing strategy, appointing diplomats, and making formal treaties such as the Olive Branch Petition, the Congress acted as the de facto national government of what became the United States.

1801 – The First Barbary War: The pirates of the Barbary States declare war on the United States of America. Three of these were nominal provinces of the Ottoman Empire, but in practice autonomous: Tripoli, Algiers, and Tunis. The fourth was the independent Sultanate of Morocco.  The cause of the war was pirates from the Barbary States seizing American merchant ships and holding the crews for ransom, demanding the U.S. pay tribute to the Barbary rulers. United States President Thomas Jefferson refused to pay this tribute.

1863 – American Civil War: Confederate General Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson dies eight days after he is accidentally shot by his own troops. Military historians consider Jackson to be one of the most gifted tactical commanders in U.S. history. His Valley Campaign and his envelopment of the Union Army's right wing at Chancellorsville are studied worldwide, even today, as examples of innovative and bold leadership.

1864 – American Civil War: Colonel Emory Upton leads a 10-regiment "Attack-in-depth" assault against the Confederate works at The Battle of Spotsylvania, which, though ultimately unsuccessful, would provide the idea for the massive assault against the Bloody Angle on May 12. Upton is slightly wounded but is immediately promoted to Brigadier general. 

1869 – The First Transcontinental Railroad, linking the eastern and western United States, is completed at Promontory Summit, Utah with the golden spike.  The rail line was built by three private companies largely financed by government bonds and huge land grants: the original Western Pacific Railroad Company between Oakland and Sacramento, California (132 mi or 212 km), the Central Pacific Railroad Company of California eastward from Sacramento to Promontory Summit, Utah Territory (U.T.) (690 mi or 1,110 km), and the Union Pacific westward to Promontory Summit from the road's statutory Eastern terminus at Council Bluffs on the eastern shore of the Missouri River opposite Omaha, Nebraska (1,085 mi or 1,746 km)

1872 – Women's Suffragist Victoria Woodhull becomes the first woman nominated for President of the United States. 

1908 – Mother's Day is observed for the first time in the United States, in Grafton, West Virginia. 

1916 – Sailing in the lifeboat James Caird, Ernest Shackleton sails across the Antarctic Sea and arrives at South Georgia after a journey of 800 nautical miles from Elephant Island after his expedition to cross Antarctic failed. 

1924 – J. Edgar Hoover is appointed first Director of the United States' Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and remains so until his death in 1972. 

1933 – Censorship: In Germany, the Nazis stage massive public book burnings. 

1940 – World War II: Winston Churchill is appointed Prime Minister of the United Kingdom following the resignation of Neville Chamberlain after his failed attempts to make peace with Adolf Hitler.

1941 – World War II: Nazi Deputy Führer Rudolf Hess parachutes into Scotland to try to negotiate a peace deal between the United Kingdom and Germany. He was taken prisoner and eventually was convicted of crimes against peace, serving a life sentence.

1948 – The Republic of China implements "temporary provisions" granting President Chiang Kai-shek extended powers to deal with the Communist uprising; they will remain in effect until 1991. 

1960 – The nuclear submarine USS Triton completes Operation Sandblast, the first underwater circumnavigation of the earth. 

1969 – Vietnam War: The Battle of Dong Ap Bia begins with an assault on Hill 937. It will ultimately become known as Hamburger Hill. Although the heavily fortified Hill 937 was of little strategic value, U.S. command ordered its capture by a frontal assault, only to abandon it soon thereafter. The action caused a controversy both in the American military and public. The battle was primarily an infantry engagement, with the U.S.Airborne troops moving up the steeply-sloped hill against well entrenched troops. Attacks were repeatedly repelled by the North Vietnamese People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN) defenses. Bad weather also hindered operations. Nevertheless, the Airborne troops eventuallytook the hill through direct assault, causing extensive casualties to the NVA forces.

1994 – African leader Nelson Mandela is inaugurated as South Africa's first black president. 

1997 – A 7.3 Mw earthquake strikes Iran's Khorasan Province, killing 1,567, injuring over 2,300, leaving 50,000 homeless, and damaging or destroying over 15,000 homes. 

1997 – The Maeslantkering, a storm surge barrier in the Netherlands that is one of the world's largest moving structures, is opened by Queen Beatrix. 

2002 – F.B.I. agent Robert Hanssen is sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole for selling United States secrets to Moscow for $1.4 million in cash and diamonds. 

2008 – An EF4 tornado strikes the Oklahoma–Kansas state line, killing 21 people and injuring over 100. 

2012 – The Damascus bombings are carried out using a pair of car bombs detonated by suicide bombers outside of a military intelligence complex in Damascus, Syria, killing 55 people and injuring 400 others,

2013 – One World Trade Center becomes the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere.


BORN TODAY

1838 – John Wilkes Booth, American actor, assassin of Abraham Lincoln (d. 1865)

1891 – Mahmoud Mokhtar, Egyptian sculptor and academic (d. 1934)

1947 – Caroline B. Cooney, American author

From Wikipedia and Google (images), ex as noted.   

THE MOST FAMOUS WARRIORS IN HISTORY ― PART VII

BY PRESSROOM

The legacies of these ancient masters of war still astound us.

Just because you’re a leader doesn’t mean you’re fair and just. Warriors throughout the last thousands of years did incredible things, but they slashed, killed, and maimed thier ways to the very top. These legendary warriors were mere men, but became the supreme lords of exotic lands that it could take a lifetime to travel to. Who’s your favorite conqueror of all time? You may find one here.


Timur, 1336-1405 AD

Also known as Tamerlane (Timur the Lame) was an Turco-Mongol emperor. He and his mother were kidnapped by a Mongol tribe in Transoxania, and young Timur learned their ways. He was inspired by Genghis Khan’s son Chagatai when Timur went on military campaigns with him. He quickly garnered positions of power in his region through any means necessary. He created a small empire and led bloody campaigns in the Middle East and India.

Skanderbeg, 1405-1468

Skanderbeg was handed over to the Ottoman sultan as a political hostage though he came from a noble family. He was well educated by the sultan and eventually entered into the Ottoman service. While he was fighting against the crusaders, he abandoned the sultan along with a few hundred other soldiers and declared himself the leader of the city of Krujë. He started overtaking nearby lands. He denounced the Ottoman Empire and started fighting against them while trying to conquer Italy and other areas of Europe.

THE BIG BANG THEORY INSIDE JOKES ― "C"

Alphabetized By Kimberly Potts

Tuesdays are thai takeout night. Photo: Michael Yarish/CBS 

They love comic books, costumes, video games, and sci-fi in all forms of media, but what are the other recurring themes, jokes, and life experiences that make up Sheldon, Leonard, Howard, Raj, Penny, Amy, Bernadette, Stuart, and their Big Bang Theory characters we’ve been following for nine seasons? Just as each of those characters can be largely defined by his or her eccentricities (we could write a book on Sheldon alone), some of those quirks also point to how much each of them has evolved throughout the seasons (even if some of them still have a significant way to go). Here’s our rundown of all the Theory-isms that continue to keep the CBS sitcom churning after all these years. 

Cinnamon

She’s Raj’s Yorkshire terrier, given to him by Howard and Bernadette to help ease his loneliness. Raj is in the habit of spoiling his “special lady,” taking her for walks in a pink baby stroller, cooking her dinners of veal and scampi, and even sharing his toothbrush with her. His friends are notoriously not as attentive to the pooch; Bernadette and Howard lost her at the park, and Penny and Leonard didn’t notice she ate a box of Valentine’s Day chocolates while they were having sex. 

Closure

One of Sheldon’s many (many, many) quirks is his inability to proceed without closure. His face twitches if someone interrupts him, he has to complete his trademark knock even if the door is answered, and he calls the Syfy network when they cancel his favorite show, Alphas, without wrapping up a season-finale cliff-hanger. Amy spends an evening trying to help him break this OCD habit without getting closure herself.

TODAY IN HISTORY ― MAY 9

May 9 is the 129th day of the year (130th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 236 days remaining until the end of the year.

NATIONAL LOST SOCK MEMORIAL DAY 

1092 – Lincoln Cathedral (The Cathedral Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Lincoln) is consecrated. It was reputedly the tallest building in the world for 238 years (1311–1549).

1763 – The Siege of Detroit, also known as the Surrender of Detroit, or the Battle of Fort Detroit, was an early engagement in the Anglo-American War of 1812. A British force under Major General Isaac Brock with with Native American allies under the Shawnee leader, Tecumseh, used bluff and deception to intimidate the American Brigadier General William Hull into surrendering the fort and town of Detroit, Michigan, and a dispirited army which nevertheless outnumbered the victorious British and Native Americans.

1865 – American Civil War: Nathan Bedford Forrest surrenders his forces at Gainesville, Alabama. He was one of the few officers in either army to enlist as a private and be promoted to general officer and corps commander during the war. Although Forrest lacked formal military education, he had a gift for leadership, strategy and tactics. 

1865 – American Civil War: President Andrew Johnson issues a proclamation ending belligerent rights of the rebels and enjoining foreign nations to intern or expel Confederate ships.

1904 – The steam locomotive City of Truro becomes the first steam engine in Europe to exceed 100 mph (160 km/h).

1926 – Admiral Richard E. Byrd and Floyd Bennett claim to have flown over the North Pole (later discovery of Byrd's diary appears to cast some doubt on the claim.)  When he returned to the United States from the Arctic, Byrd became a national hero. Congress passed a special act on December 21, 1926 promoting him to the rank of commander and awarding both him and Floyd Bennett the Medal of Honor. Bennett was promoted to the warrant officer rank of Machinist. Byrd and Bennett were presented with Tiffany Cross versions of the Medal of Honor on March 5, 1927 at the White House by President Calvin Coolidge. The widespread acclaim from the flight enabled Byrd to secure funding for the subsequent attempt to fly over the South Pole.

1941 – World War II: The German submarine U-110 is captured by the Royal Navy. On board is the latest Enigma machine which Allied cryptographers later use to break coded German messages.

1942 – Holocaust: The German SS murders 588 Jewish residents of the Podolian town of Zinkiv (Khmelnytska oblast, Ukraine). The Zoludek Ghetto (in Belarus) is destroyed and all its inhabitants murdered or deported. ― From historyholdsthesecrets.wordpress.com

1950 – Robert Schuman presents his proposal on the creation of an organized Europe, which according to him was indispensable to the maintenance of peaceful relations. This proposal, known as the "Schuman Declaration", is considered by some people to be the beginning of the creation of what is now the European Union. Inspired and for the most part drafted by Jean Monnet, this was a proposal to place Franco-German production of coal and steel under one common High Authority. This organization would be open to participation to other European countries. This cooperation was to be designed in such a way as to create common interests between European countries which would lead to gradual political integration

1960 – The Food and Drug Administration announces it will approve birth control as an additional indication for Searle's Enovid, making Enovid the world's first approved oral contraceptive pill.

1970 – Vietnam War: In Washington, D.C., 75,000 to 100,000 war protesters demonstrate in front of the White House. ― From history.com/this-day-in-history

1974 – Watergate scandal: The United States House Committee on the Judiciary opens formal and public impeachment hearings against President Richard Nixon.

1980 – In Florida, Liberian freighter MV Summit Venture collides with the Sunshine Skyway Bridge over Tampa Bay, making a 1,400-ft. section of the southbound span collapse. Thirty-five people in six cars and a Greyhound bus fall 150 ft. into the water and die.

1980 – The Norco, California shootout: Five masked gunmen hold up a Security Pacific bank, leading to a violent shoot-out and one of the largest pursuits in California history. Two of the gunmen and one police officer are killed and thirty-three police and civilian vehicles are destroyed in the chase.

2002 – The 38-day stand-off in the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem comes to an end when the Palestinians inside agree to have 13 suspected terrorists among them deported to several different countries.

2015 – Russia stages its biggest ever military parade in Moscow's Red Square to commemorate the 70th anniversary of Victory Day (VE-Day, WWII).

BORN TODAY

1800 – John Brown, American abolitionist and activist, Harper's Ferry (VA) raid (d. 1859)

1821 – William Henry Vanderbilt, American businessman and philanthropist (d. 1885)
1845 – Gustaf de Laval, Swedish engineer and businessman, steam turbine design (d. 1913)

1882 – Henry J. Kaiser, American shipbuilder and businessman, founded Kaiser Shipyards (d. 1967)

1884 – Harry S. Truman, American colonel and politician, 33rd President of the United States (d. 1972)
1918 – Mike Wallace, American journalist, media personality and one-time game show host (d. 2012)

1922 – Mary Q. Steele, American naturalist and author (d. 1992)

1947 – H. Robert Horvitz, American biologist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate
From Wikipedia and Google (images), ex as noted.