Daily Content Archive
(as of Thursday, January 14, 2021)| Word of the Day | |||||||
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| Daily Grammar Lesson | |
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Gender-Neutral PronounsIdentifying a single person with a pronoun if their gender is not known can be done by using the third-person plural forms (they, them, etc.) as gender-neutral alternatives to the third-person feminine/masculine forms. What is this sometimes called? More... | |
| Article of the Day | |
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 The Holman ProjectorThe Holman Projector was introduced by the British military in 1940. Mounted on ships, it used compressed air or steam to launch hand grenades at enemy aircraft. Though it rarely hit them, the grenades it launched produced deceptively large clouds of smoke that gave enemies the impression that a much more deadly weapon was firing upon them. A demonstration of the gun for Winston Churchill was once nearly scrapped for want of grenades but was saved when what unusual ordinance was supplied? More... | |
| This Day in History | |
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 Huygens Probe Lands on Titan (2005)It took the Cassini-Huygens spacecraft more than six years to reach Saturn. During the trip, the Huygens probe remained dormant, preserving its battery life for a landing on Saturn's largest moon. The only moon in the solar system known to have clouds and a dense atmosphere, Titan resembles Earth in many ways. It was not known whether the probe would land on solid ground or in an ocean. After Huygens touched down, Titan's surface was described as being similar to what food? More... | |
| Today's Birthday | |
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 Kimitake Hiraoka, AKA Yukio Mishima (1925)Born into a samurai family, Mishima served briefly in the finance ministry before going on to become one of the most important Japanese novelists of the 20th century. His novels are known for their exquisite attention to detail and character and often involve paradoxes—such as when a troubled monk destroys the temple he loves in The Temple of the Golden Pavilion. Following a failed coup attempt in 1970, he tried to commit seppuku, ritual suicide by self-disembowelment. How did he die? More... | |
| Quotation of the Day | |
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 Excellence encourages one about life generally; it shows the spiritual wealth of the world.George Eliot (1819-1880) | |
| Idiom of the Day | |
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jump at the chance (to do something)— To accept or seize with alacrity an opportunity (to do something). More... | |
| Today's Holiday | |
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 Ratification Day (2021)Though most people associate the end of the American Revolution with the surrender of Lord Cornwallis at Yorktown, Virginia, in 1781, the war was not officially ended until the Treaty of Paris was ratified on January 14, 1784. The Old Senate Chamber in the Maryland State House at Annapolis has been preserved exactly as it was when the ratification took place. On Ratification Day, the ceremony that takes place inside varies from year to year, but it often revolves around a particular aspect of the original event. More... | |
| Word Trivia | |
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Today's topic: slopingpitched - Describing a "steeply downward sloping" roof built at an angle. More... fastigiate - Means "sloping up to a point." More... slalom - From Norwegian sla, "sloping," and lam, "track." More... squint - Short for the obsolete asquint, which may have come from Dutch schuin, "sideways, sloping." More... | |
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