Word of the Day
ARA (AIR-uh)
1. Ara Parseghian: Head coach of the Notre Dame football team from 1964-1974
2. A constellation in the southern hemisphere
Common clues: Coach Parseghian; Notre Dame's Parseghian; Celestial altar; Palindromic constellation
Crossword puzzle frequency: 2 times a year
Frequency in English language: 40070 / 86800
Video: 1973 Sugar Bowl: Ara Parseghian speech
Ara Parseghian (born March 10, 1923 in Akron, Ohio, USA) He was of Armenian descent. Parseghian was head coach for the University of Notre Dame football team from 1964-1974. During his 11 seasons as head coach (known popularly as "the Era of Ara"), he compiled a 95-17-4 record, for a .836 winning percentage, making him the most successful Notre Dame coach of the modern era.
Parseghian originally graduated from Miami University (Ohio) and had a short professional football career with the Cleveland Browns from 1947-1949. In 1950, he returned to Miami to coach under Woody Hayes, and when Hayes left at the end of the season, Parseghian became head coach. He coached at Miami from 1951-1955. He left for Northwestern University and coached there from 1956-1963.
Finally, in 1964 he received the head coaching job at Notre Dame, and quickly turned the program around, improving their record from 2-7 the previous year to a record of 9-1. Besides his overall winning record, he won two National Championships (1966 and 1973) and three bowl games. He was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 1980.
Ara Parseghian is currently the National Spokesman for the Ara Parseghian Medical Research Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to helping find a cure for Niemann-Pick disease.
Ara (Latin for Altar) is a faint southerly constellation between the constellations Centaurus and Lupus.
Ara's brightest star, Arae, has an apparent magnitude of 2,9. Arae is believed to have at least three planets orbiting it, one of which is thought to be rocky in nature.
The altar, usually depicted upside down, but sometimes upright with the smoke drifting into the Milky Way, was identified as that of the centaur Chiron; its original Latin name was Ara Centauri. It was also occasionally called the altar of Dionysus. Since, however, the constellation was identified, and introduced, in the 18th Century, connection to the this mythology is likely to have been by design of the constellation's creator, and unconnected to the actual beliefs of the ancient Greeks about this area of sky.
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Ara Parseghian” and “Ara”.
|
|
