Daily Content Archive
(as of Saturday, November 21, 2015)| Word of the Day | |||||||
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menhir
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| Daily Grammar Lesson | |
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AppositivesAn appositive is a noun that serves to describe or rename another noun (or pronoun) that appears directly before it in a sentence. When an appositive is made up of a noun phrase, what is it called? More... | |
| Article of the Day | |
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 The Rosicrucian OrderIn the early 1600s, three manifestos were published describing an esoteric order founded by Christian Rosenkreuz. The Rosicrucian Order's secret teachings deal with the occult symbols of the rose and the cross and with mystical writings containing kabbalistic, Hermetic, and other doctrines. Practitioners claim occult powers and employ the terminology of alchemy to expound their mystical doctrines. According to the 17th century texts, Rosenkreutz was born in 1378 and lived for how many years? More... | |
| This Day in History | |
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 Rebecca Latimer Felton Becomes the First Female US Senator (1922)Georgia Governor Thomas Hardwick unsuccessfully fought the 19th Amendment, which allowed women to vote—and to vote against him in retaliation when he ran for US Senate. Before the election, he tried to appease female voters by naming Felton, an 87-year-old suffragist and white supremacist, to be Georgia's interim senator for the shortest term in history—one day. Felton thus became the first woman, one of the last former slave-owners, and the oldest freshman to serve. Did Hardwick's ploy work? More... | |
| Today's Birthday | |
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 Mollie Steimer (1897)After immigrating to New York City from Russia as a teen, Steimer worked in the garment industry, where she became involved in workers' rights and anarchism. After joining a Jewish anarchist collective, she began publishing leaflets that opposed US involvement in World War I. Arrested for distributing them, she was convicted under the Espionage Act and deported to Russia. She was soon forced to leave Russia, and later fled both Germany and France. Where did she spend the rest of her life? More... | |
| Quotation of the Day | |
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 The female of the genus homo is economically dependent on the male. He is her food supply.Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860-1935) | |
| Idiom of the Day | |
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in (the) bud— In an undeveloped, immature, or incipient state. More... | |
| Today's Holiday | |
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 Feast of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary (2017)The Feast of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary was first celebrated by the Greeks in about the eighth century and was not adopted by the Roman Catholic Church until the later Middle Ages; no one is quite sure when this festival was first introduced. As related in the apocryphal Book of James, it commemorates the presentation of the three-year-old Mary in the Temple to consecrate her to the service of God. More... | |
| Word Trivia | |
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Today's topic: signsconjecture - First meant "the interpretation of omens or signs" or "divination," and it literally means "to throw together," that is, to produce a theory by putting together a number of facts. More... diacritic - From Greek diakrinein, "distinguish from," it denotes marks or signs that distinguish different values or sounds (pronunciations) of a letter. More... semiopathy - A tendency to read humorously inappropriate meanings into signs. More... sigla - The words for signs and abbreviations representing words. More... | |
| In the News | |
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Meet the Dogs Who Can Sniff Out Cancer Better than Some Lab TestsLucy, a cross between a Labrador retriever and an Irish water spaniel, failed miserably at guide dog school. As she was curious and easily excitable, random scents distracted Lucy from her master's path, and it wasn't long before she was unceremoniously ... More... | |