Daily Content Archive
(as of Saturday, November 7, 2015)| Word of the Day | |||||||
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tambour
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| Daily Grammar Lesson | |
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Subjunctive Mood - Expressing WishesOne of the most straightforward ways of using the subjunctive mood is when we want to describe a wish for something to be different than it is or was. How do we generally construct these sentences? More... | |
| Article of the Day | |
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 The Jonesboro School MassacreOn March 24, 1998, Mitchell Johnson, age 13, and Andrew Golden, age 11, opened fire on students and teachers at their Arkansas middle school. Johnson hid in a wooded area and waited while Golden set off the school's fire alarm. Then, as the building was being evacuated, the two boys shot and killed four students and a teacher; another 10 people were wounded in the shooting. Both boys were apprehended, tried, and convicted. When were they released from custody? More... | |
| This Day in History | |
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 Tacoma Narrows Bridge Collapses (1940)Four months after it opened to traffic, the Tacoma Narrows Bridge collapsed into Puget Sound in Washington state. During construction, workers had noticed that the deck demonstrated an unusual amount of vertical movement in windy conditions, but few expected "Galloping Gertie" to suffer such a catastrophic failure. The collapse led to major changes in suspension bridge design. Thankfully, no people were killed when the bridge came down. What was the only fatality caused by the collapse? More... | |
| Today's Birthday | |
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 Konrad Lorenz (1903)As a boy, Lorenz nursed sick animals from the local zoo. He became a zoologist and studied the behavior of birds, emphasizing innate as opposed to learned behaviors and focusing on imprinting, a rapid learning process in young animals that establishes behavior patterns. Lorenz later examined human thought and aggression, making controversial analogies between human and animal behavior in his 1963 book On Aggression. For his scientific efforts, he shared the 1973 Nobel Prize with whom? More... | |
| Quotation of the Day | |
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 My definition [of a philosopher] is of a man up in a balloon, with his family and friends holding the ropes which confine him to earth and trying to haul him down.Louisa May Alcott (1832-1888) | |
| Idiom of the Day | |
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shank's nag— One's legs and feet, used for walking; travel by foot. Also "shanks' nag." A reference to the shank— the lower leg between the knee and the ankle—and the use of ponies or horses for travel. More... | |
| Today's Holiday | |
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 Lakshmi Puja (2018)The annual festival in honor of the Hindu goddess Lakshmi is held in the autumn, when Hindus of all castes ask for her blessings. Lights shine from every house, and no one sleeps during the celebrations. Lakshmi is traditionally associated with wealth, prosperity, and good luck. In later Hindu literature, she appears as the dutiful wife of the god Vishnu and is typically portrayed massaging his feet while he rests on the cosmic serpent, Shesa. She remains a popular Hindu goddess to this day in India, where she is a special patron of shopkeepers. More... | |
| Word Trivia | |
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Today's topic: monkascetic - Pronounced uh-SET-ik, it is derived from Greek asketes, "monk, hermit." More... dean - Comes from Latin decanum, "chief of a group of ten," and Greek dekanos, "a monk or dignitary in charge of ten others." More... nun - Derived from Latin nonna, the feminine of nonnus, "monk," originally a title given to an elderly person. More... monk, friar - A monk stays in a monastery; a friar does not. More... | |