Daily Content Archive
(as of Wednesday, March 25, 2015)| Word of the Day | |||||||
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hieratic
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| Daily Grammar Lesson | |
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ColonsA colon ( : ) is used after an independent clause to add information that helps illustrate or clarify what it says. How many spaces should be used after a colon? More... | |
| Article of the Day | |
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 LegoLego is a line of toys featuring colorful plastic bricks, gears, and minifigures that can be assembled to create models of almost anything imaginable. The company had very humble beginnings in the workshop of Ole Kirk Christiansen, a poor carpenter from Denmark, but today manufactures about 20 billion bricks a year. A substantial fan culture has developed that has used the toys to build such things as a harpsichord, a pendulum clock, and an electronic lab kit. What does "Lego" mean? More... | |
| This Day in History | |
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 John Lennon and Yoko Ono Hold Their First Bed-In for Peace (1969)Five days after John Lennon of the Beatles married the Japanese avant-garde artist Yoko Ono, the couple held the first of two week-long Bed-Ins for Peace as a non-violent way of protesting war and promoting peace. For the first Bed-In, the couple invited members of the press into their Amsterdam hotel room and then sat in bed and talked about peace. Months later, they held their second Bed-In in Montreal. What hit song did they record during the second Bed-In? More... | |
| Today's Birthday | |
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 Béla Bartók (1881)Bartók was a Hungarian composer, virtuoso pianist, and collector of folk music. In 1904, having discovered that the folk-music repertory generally accepted as Hungarian was in fact largely urban Roma—Gypsy—music, he set about researching Hungarian folk music. He worked folk themes and rhythms into his own music, achieving a style that was at once nationalistic and deeply personal. What surprising discoveries did he make in his study of folk music? More... | |
| Quotation of the Day | |
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 Let other pens dwell on guilt and misery.Jane Austen (1775-1817) | |
| Idiom of the Day | |
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Box and Cox— Two people who always miss each other and thus are never together. The phrase comes from the 19th-century story of the same name, in which two men named Box and Cox rent the same room at different times of day. More... | |
| Today's Holiday | |
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 Maryland Day (2019)Maryland Day commemorates the landing of the first colonists there in 1634, and the first Roman Catholic Mass they celebrated. Named after Henrietta Maria, the consort of King Charles I of England, Maryland was the first proprietary colony on the American mainland. George Calvert, Lord Baltimore, was appointed by the king as proprietor, and he hoped to establish a refuge for other Catholics who had been persecuted in Anglican England. He was succeeded as head of the colony by his son, Cecilius Calvert, who brought 200 more colonists over from England. More... | |
| Word Trivia | |
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Today's topic: jerkflounce - Can mean a sudden fling or jerk of the body or a limb. More... hike - As a walk, it evolved from its original meaning of "to jerk or pull" (oneself along). More... jerk - As in jerked meat (e.g. beef jerky), it is from American Spanish and Quechua charqui, "dried flesh." More... weight lifting, power lifting - Weight lifting is specifically the press, the clean and jerk, and the snatch; power lifting is the bench press, squat, and dead lift. More... | |