Daily Content Archive
(as of Wednesday, August 1, 2018)| Word of the Day | |||||||
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self-possession
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| Daily Grammar Lesson | |
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Defining Conditional SentencesConditional sentences are in the conditional mood (a sub-category of the subjunctive mood), which is used for hypothetical scenarios that are dependent on a certain condition or conditions. What word is usually used in constructing a conditional sentence? More... | |
| Article of the Day | |
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 Sargon of AkkadSargon of Akkad was a 24th-century BCE Mesopotamian king who established one of the first multiethnic and centrally ruled empires in history. His dynasty lasted approximately 160 years, and his vast territory extended from Elam to the Mediterranean Sea and included Mesopotamia, parts of modern-day Iran, Syria, and possibly portions of the Arabian Peninsula. An account of Sargon's early childhood from his purported autobiography closely resembles that of what religious figure? More... | |
| This Day in History | |
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 University of Texas Massacre (1966)On August 1, 1966, University of Texas student and former Marine Charles Whitman stabbed his mother and wife to death. He then took an array of firearms to his university's 307-foot (94-m) clock tower. There, he shot and killed more than a dozen people and wounded at least 30 others before police killed him. In his writings, Whitman expressed regret and confusion over his actions and asked that an autopsy be performed to determine what had caused his behavior. What did the autopsy find? More... | |
| Today's Birthday | |
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 Maria Mitchell (1818)The daughter of an amateur astronomer, Mitchell spent her formative years learning to observe the heavens. When she was 29, she discovered a comet. For her achievement, she was awarded a gold medal by the king of Denmark. Her reputation as an astronomer thus secured, she soon became the first woman elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and, thereafter, to the American Association for the Advancement of Science. To which of America's Founding Fathers was Mitchell distantly related? More... | |
| Quotation of the Day | |
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 One of the strange things about living in the world is that it is only now and then one is quite sure one is going to live forever and ever and ever.Frances Hodgson Burnett (1849-1924) | |
| Idiom of the Day | |
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one after another— Consecutively and in quick succession, with one person or thing rapidly following another in order (and usually indicating a large amount altogether). (Often formulated as "one (noun) after another.") More... | |
| Today's Holiday | |
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 Lammas (2018)Possibly one of the four great pagan festivals of Britain, Lammas was known as the Gule of August in the Middle Ages. In medieval England, loaves made from the first ripe grain were blessed in the church on this day—the word lammas being a short form of "loaf mass." Lammas Day is similar in original intent to the Jewish Feast of Weeks, also called Shavuot or Pentecost, which came at the end of the Passover grain harvest. A 15th-century suggestion was that the name derived from "lamb" and "mass," and was the time when a feudal tribute of lambs was paid. More... | |
| Word Trivia | |
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Today's topic: sleepingcubicle - Originally a small room for sleeping—from Latin cumb, "lie down"—that was separated from a larger room. More... breakfast - Literally means "breaking the fast"—of the night, as it is the first meal after sleeping. More... dormition - A peaceful and painless death, as well as the act of sleeping or falling asleep. More... incubate, incubation - Latin incubare, the source of incubate, literally meant "lie down on"; incubation once had the sense of sleeping in a sacred place or temple for oracular purposes. More... | |