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May 1, 2026
May 1, 2026
Word
distend
verb
Definition
  1. extend
  2. to enlarge from internal pressure : swell
  3. to become expanded
Example
With mouths agape and eyes distended, the audience listened to the canoeist's incredible story of survival after being capsized by the river's rapids.
Origin
The history of the word "distend" stretches back to the Latin verb "tendere" -- a root whose kin have really expanded our language. To find evidence of this expansion, look to words that include "tend" or "tent"; many have "tendere," which means "to stretch, extend, or spread," in their family tree. Perhaps the simplest example is "tent," which names a shelter made from a piece of material stretched over a frame. You'll also find the influence of "tendere" in "extend," "tendon," "contend," "portend," and "tendency."
Webster's Dictionary
Idiom
one can catch more flies with honey than vinegar
One accomplishes more by being nice than by being nasty. This saying dates from the 1600s and has appeared in numerous languages, among them Spanish (in Cervantes's Don Quixote) and French. Even Abraham Lincoln quoted a version of it in his 1842 speech to the Washingtonian Temperance Society: "It is an old and true maxim that a drop of honey catches more flies than a gallon of gall."
The American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms
Fun facts
  1. Jupiter spins so fast that there is a new sunrise nearly every 10 hours.
  2. The name for the space between your eyebrows is "nasion."
Snapple's under-the-cap 'Real Facts'
Artist
Gentile da Fabriano
1370 - Aug 1, 1427

Gentile da Fabriano was an Italian painter known for his participation in the International Gothic painter style. He worked in various places in central Italy, mostly in Tuscany. His best-known works are his Adoration of the Magi from the Strozzi Altarpiece, and the Flight into Egypt.

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Wikipedia, Google Arts & Culture
Historical figure
Theodore Bikel
May 2, 1924 - Jul 21, 2015

Theodore Meir Bikel was an Austrian-American actor, folk singer, musician, composer, unionist and political activist. He appeared in films including The African Queen, Moulin Rouge, The Enemy Below, I Want to Live!, My Fair Lady, The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming and 200 Motels. For his portrayal of Sheriff Max Muller in The Defiant Ones, he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.

He made his stage debut in Tevye the Milkman in Tel Aviv, Israel, when he was in his teens. He later studied acting at Britain's Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and made his London stage debut in 1948 and in New York in 1955. He was also a widely recognized and recorded folk singer and guitarist. In 1959, he co-founded the Newport Folk Festival and created the role of Captain von Trapp opposite Mary Martin as Maria in the original Broadway production of Rodgers & Hammerstein's The Sound of Music. In 1969, Bikel began acting and singing on stage as Tevye in the musical Fiddler on the Roof, a role he performed more often than any other actor to date. The production won nine Tony Awards and was one of the longest-running musicals in Broadway history.

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Wikipedia, Google Arts & Culture
Historic event
Gettysburg Address

The Gettysburg Address is a speech that U.S. President Abraham Lincoln delivered during the American Civil War at the dedication of the Soldiers' National Cemetery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, on the afternoon of Thursday, November 19, 1863, four and a half months after the Union armies defeated those of the Confederacy at the Battle of Gettysburg. It is one of the best-known speeches in American history.

Not even the day's primary speech, Lincoln's carefully crafted address came to be seen as one of the greatest and most influential statements of American national purpose. In just 271 words, beginning with the now iconic phrase "Four score and seven years ago,"‍ referring to the signing of the Declaration of Independence 87 years earlier, Lincoln described the US as a nation "conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal," and represented the Civil War as a test that would determine whether such a nation, the Union sundered by the secession crisis, could endure. He extolled the sacrifices of those who died at Gettysburg in defense of those principles, and exhorted his listeners to resolve

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Wikipedia, Google Arts & Culture
Quote
Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young. The greatest thing in life is to keep your mind young.
Henry Ford