The Middle English definition of the word “nice” (c. 1250-1300) was “foolish or stupid.” It came from the Old French word “nice,” which meant “careless, clumsy; weak; poor, needy; simple, stupid, silly, foolish.” The Latin origin is nescius: “ignorant, unaware, not knowing.” By 1769, the word had come to mean “agreeable, delightful.”

The strongest recorded earthquake happened in Chile in 1960. The magnitude 9.5 tremor killed more than 5,000 people.

Whistling at and cat-calling women usually has the opposite effect.

A study in the Journal of Environmental Psychology showed that pedestrians using GPS to explore a city took longer to get places and made more errors than those using paper maps.

Stephen Stills made an unsuccessful bid to become one of the Mon­kees. He was turned down, not due to any lack of ability, but because of a conflict with his existing music publishing contract. So instead, he recommended his friend, multi-instrumentalist Peter Tork.

This article appears in August 15 • 2014.

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