Daily Content Archive
(as of Tuesday, June 27, 2017)| Word of the Day | |||||||
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ineffable
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| Article of the Day | |
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 The Four Heavenly KingsThe Four Heavenly Kings are Buddhist deities tasked with watching over the world's four cardinal directions. As guardians of the world and fighters of evil, they have vowed to shield the Buddha's followers from danger and possess the power to command a legion of supernatural creatures to protect the Dharma, the Buddha's teachings. Thrice monthly, the kings send messengers or go themselves to see how virtue and morality are faring in the world of men. To whom do they report their findings? More... | |
| This Day in History | |
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 "BTK" Serial Killer Dennis Rader Pleads Guilty to 10 Murders (2005)Rader was a city employee, married father of two, Boy Scout leader, and an active churchgoer—and a serial killer. From 1974 to 1991, he killed 10 people in and around Wichita, Kansas. In 2004, after years of silence, he resumed taunting police and local media with letters describing the murders. In February 2005, police used information on a floppy disk he had sent them to locate and arrest him. He pled guilty that June. Five days after his arrest, he was fired from his job—for what? More... | |
| Today's Birthday | |
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 Lafcadio Hearn (1850)Born in Greece and educated in Ireland, Hearn immigrated to the US at age 19 and lived in poverty for a time until he found employment as a journalist. He was a colorful but morbidly discontented man, admired for his highly polished tales of the macabre. In 1890, a magazine sent him to Japan, where he married a Japanese woman, took a Japanese name, and became a citizen. His subsequent books offered the West its first thoughtful view of Japanese culture. What partial disability did he have? More... | |
| Quotation of the Day | |
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 To furnish the means of acquiring knowledge is . . . the greatest benefit that can be conferred upon mankind. It prolongs life itself and enlarges the sphere of existence.John Quincy Adams (1767-1848) | |
| Idiom of the Day | |
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ink-slinger— slang A writer, especially one who produces a large amount of low-quality material for a living. More... | |
| Today's Holiday | |
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 Djibouti Independence Day (2017)On this day in 1977, Djibouti gained autonomy from France, after more than 100 years under French rule. It is observed as a national holiday. More... | |
| In the News | |
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Could the Best Memory System Be One that Forgets?Intuitively, we tend to think of forgetting as failure, as something gone wrong in our ability to remember. Now, Canadian neuroscientists with the University of Toronto are challenging that notion. In a paper published Wednesday in the journal Neuron, they ... More... | |