Daily Content Archive
(as of Wednesday, February 10, 2016)| Word of the Day | |||||||
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curlicue
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| Daily Grammar Lesson | |
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PronounsPronouns are words that are used in place of nouns in a sentence. The noun being replaced is known as the antecedent of the pronoun. Pronouns can be the subject of a sentence or clause, the object of a verb, or they can follow linking verbs to rename or re-identify the subject, which is known as what? More... | |
| Article of the Day | |
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 Evidence of Alien Life?A pulsar is a rapidly spinning neutron star that emits radiation in narrow beams focused by the star's magnetic field. Because the pulsar's magnetic poles do not align with the poles of its rotational axis, the beams sweep around like the beacon of a lighthouse and are thus observed on Earth as short, regular pulses. Some scientists initially suggested that extraterrestrial civilizations were the source of the strange signals and thus dubbed the first pulsar LGM-1, which is an acronym for what? More... | |
| This Day in History | |
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 HMS Dreadnought Is Launched (1906)The HMS Dreadnought of the Royal Navy was a battleship that revolutionized naval power when it entered service in 1906. Dreadnought represented such a marked advance in naval technology that its name came to be associated with an entire generation of battleships, the "dreadnoughts," as well as the class of ships named for it, while the generation of ships it made obsolete became known as "pre-dreadnoughts." What features made the Dreadnought so advanced? More... | |
| Today's Birthday | |
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 Boris Pasternak (1890)Pasternak was a Russian author whose novel Doctor Zhivago, an epic of wandering, spiritual isolation and love amid the harshness of the revolution and its aftermath, became a bestseller in the West but was circulated only in secrecy in the Soviet Union until 1987. Pasternak was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1958, but he was forced to decline it because of Soviet opposition to his work. Why was Pasternak's name said to have been crossed off an execution list by Joseph Stalin? More... | |
| Quotation of the Day | |
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 It is a funny thing about life; if you refuse to accept anything but the best you very often get it.W. Somerset Maugham (1874-1965) | |
| Idiom of the Day | |
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winning ways— One's charming, endearing, or likeable personality or demeanor. More... | |
| Today's Holiday | |
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 Magha Purnima (2017)Like Kartika Purnima, this is a Hindu bathing festival, and Hindus believe that bathing in the Ganges on this day is a great purifying act. When they cannot get to the Ganges, they bathe in the sea or in any holy stream, river, or tank (a pool or pond used to store water). There is a large tank that is considered holy at Kumbhkonam; Hindus believe on this particular day, the Ganges flows into the tank. Magha Purnima is a day for fasting and charities. Early in the morning, libations are offered to dead ancestors, while donations of food, clothes, and money are given to the poor. More... | |
| Word Trivia | |
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Today's topic: healingbalsam - First referred to an aromatic resinous substance with healing or soothing properties. More... healing, curing - Healing is a process in which an organism's health is restored; curing is a method that promotes healing. More... psychiatry - From Greek psykhe, "mind," and iatreia, "healing." More... salve - The main semantic element is "healing," but the etymological meaning is "oily substance." More... | |