Daily Content Archive
(as of Saturday, May 12, 2018)| Word of the Day | |||||||
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pennant
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| Daily Grammar Lesson | |
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Forming ParticiplesParticiples are words formed from verbs that can function as adjectives, as gerunds, or to form the continuous and perfect tenses of verbs. Past participles are often (but not always) formed by adding "-d" or "-ed" to the end of the verb. What ending is always used to form present participles? More... | |
| Article of the Day | |
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 The Giant BeaverCastoroides ohioensis, the giant beaver, was a huge rodent species that lived in N America during the Pleistocene and became extinct at the end of the last Ice Age, roughly 10,000 years ago. Fossils of the creature, first found in 1837, indicate that it could grow as large as 8.2 ft (2.5 m) long and weigh up to 220 lb (100 kg). While the teeth of modern beavers are suited for gnawing on wood, the giant beaver's teeth were bigger and broader. Did it construct lodges like modern beavers do? More... | |
| This Day in History | |
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 Body of Lindbergh Baby Found (1932)In one of America's most notorious crimes, the infant son of famed aviator Charles Lindbergh was kidnapped and murdered in 1932. The massive search effort included unprecedented federal involvement, and Lindbergh even met with organized crime figures in an attempt to determine the whereabouts of his son. Ten weeks after the boy disappeared, his corpse was found just miles from the Lindbergh home. Four years after the kidnapping, a riotous trial resulted in the conviction and execution of whom? More... | |
| Today's Birthday | |
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 Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin (1910)Hodgkin developed a passion for chemistry at an early age and went on to become a leader in the field of X-ray crystallography. In 1948, she and her colleagues made the first X-ray photograph of vitamin B12—one of the most complex nonprotein compounds—and eventually determined its atomic arrangement. Her work in determining its structure, as well as that of other biochemical compounds, won her a 1964 Nobel Prize. In 1969, Hodgkin completed a similar three-dimensional analysis of what hormone? More... | |
| Quotation of the Day | |
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 Cruelty, like every other vice, requires no motive outside of itself,—it only requires opportunity.George Eliot (1819-1880) | |
| Idiom of the Day | |
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(the) next thing (one) knows— All of a sudden; out of nowhere; without warning. More... | |
| Today's Holiday | |
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 Tulip Time (2018)When a group of high school students in Pella, Iowa, staged an operetta called Tulip Time 1935, the only tulips growing in the town were in pots. But the musical performance gave the local chamber of commerce an idea for promoting the town's Dutch heritage. They planted thousands of bulbs and got the local historical society to start preserving the town's Dutch buildings and heirlooms. During the festival, townspeople dress in Dutch provincial costumes and engage in such activities as street scrubbing, authentic Dutch dancing and folk music, and tours of the formal tulip gardens. More... | |
| Word Trivia | |
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Today's topic: temporarybooth - First a temporary dwelling made of branches, material, etc. More... learning cottage - A residential trailer used as a temporary or portable classroom. More... lodge - First was a temporary dwelling, as a hut or tent. More... jerry-built - Is either from English dialect jerry, "bad, defective," a pejorative use of the male nickname Jerry, or from nautical slang jury, "temporary," which came to be used of all sorts of makeshift and inferior objects. More... | |
| In the News | |
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How the Author of 'Madeline' Created His Most Famous CharacterLudwig Bemelmans grew up hearing stories about a young girl who attended a boarding school where the students “slept in little beds that stood in two rows” and “went walking in two straight lines.” That young girl was his mother, Franciska. Today we might recognize ... More... | |