Daily Content Archive
(as of Thursday, November 9, 2017)| Word of the Day | |||||||
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scopolamine
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| Daily Grammar Lesson | |
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Modal Verbs and TenseA modal verb must always be used with a main verb—they cannot stand completely on their own. But because we cannot use modal verbs with main verbs that are in a past-tense form, the verb that follows a modal must always be in what form? More... | |
| Article of the Day | |
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 Serge VoronoffVoronoff was a French surgeon notorious for transplanting glandular tissue from monkeys into humans in the 1920s and 30s in an attempt to slow and reverse the aging process. By the early 1930s, thousands of men around the world had been treated with Voronoff's "rejuvenation" technique, but his popularity waned when it became clear that the procedure did not produce the desired results. What notorious experiment conducted by Voronoff inspired the novel Nora, the Monkey Turned Woman? More... | |
| This Day in History | |
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 Great Lakes Storm Reaches Peak Ferocity (1913)The deadliest and most destructive natural disaster ever to hit the Great Lakes region, the "Big Blow," "Freshwater Fury," or "White Hurricane," as it is variously known, was a blizzard with hurricane-force winds that battered parts of the US and Canada for several days in November 1913. Approximately 250 people died in the violent storm—all of them sailors who perished when their ships were wrecked or sunk on the lakes. How tall were the swells that vessels had to contend with during the storm? More... | |
| Today's Birthday | |
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 Benjamin Banneker (1731)Banneker was a free African American who was largely self-educated in astronomy and mathematics. In 1761, he drew attention by building a wooden clock that kept precise time for some 50 years. He accurately predicted a solar eclipse in 1789 and began publishing annually the Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia Almanac and Ephemeris, sending an early copy to Thomas Jefferson to counter the belief that African Americans were intellectually inferior. How did Jefferson respond? More... | |
| Quotation of the Day | |
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 I at least have so much to do in unraveling certain human lots, and seeing how they were woven and interwoven, that all the light I can command must be concentrated on this particular web, and not dispersed over that tempting range of relevancies called the universe.George Eliot (1819-1880) | |
| Idiom of the Day | |
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sleeping policeman— slang A bump, ramp, or hump in the road that is intended to cause cars to reduce their speed, especially in residential areas. Primarily heard in UK. More... | |
| Today's Holiday | |
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 Oglebay Winter Festival of Lights (2018)A premier light show in Wheeling, West Virginia, the Winter Festival of Lights started in 1985 and is now considered a rival of the light show at Niagara Falls. More than a million people visit each year to see two million lights on the downtown Victorian buildings, with architectural and landscape lighting designed by world-famous lighting designers. Some 300 acres of the city's Oglebay Park are covered with animated light displays that depict symbols of Hanukkah and Christmas and general winter scenes. There are also nighttime parades and storefront animations. More... | |
| Word Trivia | |
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Today's topic: ignorantignore, ignorant - Ignore and ignorant are from Latin i-, "not," and gno-, "know." More... nescient - Can mean "ignorant" or "agnostic," coming from Latin ne, "not," and scire, "know." More... nice, nicety - Nice first meant "foolish, ignorant," derived from Latin nescius, "ignorant"; nicety first meant "stupidity." More... rude - Derives from Latin rudis, "uncultivated," and first meant "uneducated, ignorant." More... | |
| In the News | |
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Beware! This is your brain on sleep deprivation.You know how when you don’t get enough sleep, you feel like you’re moving through the day in a fog, feeling dopey? That’s because you are, a new UCLA study suggests. Indeed, sleep deprivation can actually stop your brain cells from communicating correctly and ... More... | |