Daily Content Archive
(as of Tuesday, September 26, 2017)| Word of the Day | |||||||
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subaqueous
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| Daily Grammar Lesson | |
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Cumulative AdjectivesWhen multiple adjectives are used in a sentence, they are sometimes separated by commas. What are "cumulative adjectives," and why aren't they separated by commas? More... | |
| Article of the Day | |
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 Prokudin-Gorsky: The Empire That Was RussiaEducated as a chemist, Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky devoted himself to the development of early color photography. By taking rapid sequences of monochrome photos through different colored filters and overlaying them, he was able to reconstruct original color scenes. Around 1905, he set out to document the Russian Empire and went on to capture vivid portraits of a lost world—the nation on the eve of World War I and the coming Russian revolution. What did Tsar Nicholas II give him to aid in the project? More... | |
| This Day in History | |
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 Steamship RMS Queen Mary Is Launched (1934)Construction on the Queen Mary ocean liner began in Scotland in 1930. In 1934, British King George V's consort, Queen Mary, christened the ship in her own name. Operated by the Cunard Line, the glamorous luxury ship carried passengers between New York and England for decades—except during World War II, when it was painted grey and converted to carry troops. In the 1960s, air travel rendered transatlantic passenger ships obsolete, and the Queen Mary was retired. Where is it now? More... | |
| Today's Birthday | |
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 Thomas Stearns "T. S." Eliot (1888)Eliot was an American-British poet and critic and an immensely distinguished literary figure who, from the 1920s on, was the most influential English-language modernist poet. His early poems, such as "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" and "The Waste Land," express the anguish and barrenness of modern life and the isolation of the individual. In his later poetry, he turned from spiritual desolation to hope for human salvation. What book by Eliot is the basis for the musical Cats? More... | |
| Quotation of the Day | |
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 Why are women...so much more interesting to men than men are to women?Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) | |
| Idiom of the Day | |
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l'esprit de l'escalier— A French phrase meaning "the wit of the staircase"; a perfect witty remark, retort, or rejoinder that occurs to one after the fact or too late to be used. (Also written as "l'esprit d'escalier.") More... | |
| Today's Holiday | |
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 Birthday of Johnny Appleseed (2017)John Chapman—better known as Johnny Appleseed for his lifelong dedication to planting apple seedlings all over the American Midwest—was born on this day in 1774. While some frontier settlers thought he was a saint, or at the very least a religious fanatic, with his tin pot hat and coffee-sack tunic, the Native Americans regarded him as a great medicine man since he planted herbs as well as apples. More... | |
| Word Trivia | |
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Today's topic: mineraldiamond - Developed from adamant—the name of the hardest stone or mineral of ancient times—from Latin adamans, from Greek adamas, "invincible" (a-, "not," and daman, "to tame"). More... Formica - Got its name from being created as a substitute "for mica," a mineral. More... mineral - Etymologically "something obtained by mining," from Latin minera, "ore." More... snow - Technically a mineral, it is Teutonic in origin, from an Indo-European root shared by the Latin words niv-/nix and Greek nipha; the spelling snow first appeared in English around 1200. More... | |
| In the News | |
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Don't overthink your exerciseWith the explosion of boutique gyms and spin classes and ultramarathons, it can feel like exercise should be both expensive and extreme. But researchers are finding that it really doesn’t seem to matter what kind of physical activity you do to reap great health ... More... | |