Today is... 

Thesaurus Day

Today is Thesaurus Day! Peter Mark Roget, the author of Roget’s Thesaurus, was born on this day in 1779. In 1840, Roget retired from a successful career in medicine and spent the rest of his life working on “Roget’s Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases.” He published his dictionary of synonyms in 1852. Since then, it has never been out of print!

Did you know that the word “thesaurus” is Latin for “treasure”? Roget’s original treasure trove of information included 15,000 words organized into six primary categories—existence, relation, quantity, number, and time. Today the book boasts over 230,000 words, but it is still organized by ideas and concepts as opposed to alphabetically.

Pull out your thesaurus, use some new words, and stretch your vocabulary in honor of Thesaurus Day!

Today is also Peking Duck Day

January is Get Organized Month & National Oatmeal Month

images and text courtesy of MyPunchbowl.com" -- http://www.mypunchbowl.com/

History for January 18 1778 - English navigator Captain James Cook discovered the Hawaiian Islands, which he called the "Sandwich Islands." 1911 - For the first time an aircraft landed on a ship. Pilot Eugene B. Ely flew onto the deck of the USS Pennsylvania in San Francisco harbor. 1939 - Louis Armstrong and his orchestra recorded "Jeepers Creepers." 1958 - Willie O'Ree made his NHL debut with the Boston Bruins. He was the first black player to enter the league. 1973 - Pink Floyd began recording "Dark Side Of The Moon." 1996 - Lisa Marie Presley filed for divorce from Michael Jackson. ________________________________________________________ "The life of every man is a diary in which he means to write one story, and writes another; and his humblest hour is when he compares the volume as it is with what he hoped to make it." --James M. Barrie