Daily Content Archive
(as of Saturday, August 1, 2015)| Word of the Day | |||||||
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excursus
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| Daily Grammar Lesson | |
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Expressing Equality Using "As … As"One way of expressing similarities, differences, or changes with comparative adverbs is by using the structure "as … as." What construction do we use to describe two things as equal? More... | |
| Article of the Day | |
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 Ethel MermanMerman was a Tony Award winning star of film and stage. Her precise enunciation, wide vocal range, and accurate pitch garnered her much acclaim. She began singing while working as a secretary and eventually became a full time vaudeville performer. Her powerful alto voice afforded her great advantages at a time when stage singers performed without microphones. She made her theater debut in Girl Crazy (1930). According to Broadway lore, what did George Gershwin advise her never to do? More... | |
| This Day in History | |
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 MTV Is Launched (1981)MTV is an American cable television network that was originally created to broadcast videos of pop and rock musicians. It quickly gained a wide following, and soon virtually all major pop and rock performers were making videos to be aired on MTV. In the 1990s, MTV diversified its programming, airing game shows, cartoons, sitcoms, documentaries, and reality shows. The network has had a profound impact on both the music industry and popular culture. What was the first music video aired on MTV? More... | |
| Today's Birthday | |
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 Herman Melville (1819)Neglected for much of his career but now considered one of the greatest American writers, Melville was born into an impoverished family and had little formal schooling. He sailed for the South Seas on a whaler in 1841, jumped ship after 18 months, and spent the next 2 years on various Pacific islands. His popular first novels were based on these adventures. His masterpiece, Moby-Dick, is both an intense whaling narrative and a symbolic examination of US democracy. To whom is it dedicated? More... | |
| Quotation of the Day | |
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 Democracy is the healthful lifeblood which circulates through the veins and arteries, which supports the system, but which ought never to appear externally, and as the mere blood itself.Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) | |
| Idiom of the Day | |
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a bit dicey— Carrying a certain degree of risk or danger; uncertain of a favorable outcome. More... | |
| Today's Holiday | |
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 Beiderbecke Memorial Jazz Festival (2019)Leon "Bix" Beiderbecke (1903-1931) was an American jazz cornetist, pianist, and composer whose unique style on the horn and tragically short life made him a Jazz Age legend at the age of 28. Held in Davenport, Iowa, this annual four-day jazz festival, popularly known as the "Bix Bash," features concerts by some of the world's best jazz bands as well as the Bix Jazz Society Youth Band, tours of Bix's boyhood home, a jazz liturgy at the First Presbyterian Church, and a concert at Bix's grave in Oakdale Memorial Gardens. More... | |
| Word Trivia | |
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Today's topic: peapeanut - Takes its name from its resemblance to peas in a pod and has these synonyms: pinda, goober, groundnut, ground pea, earthnut, and monkey nut; "peanut" appeared in the early 19th century. It is not a nut but a legume (pea). More... pisiform - Shaped like a pea. More... | |