Daily Content Archive
(as of Saturday, November 11, 2017)| Word of the Day | |||||||
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intone
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| Daily Grammar Lesson | |
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Using Predicate NounsPredicate nouns are a subset of a larger category known as "subject complements," which rename or re-identify the subject. What type of verb do subject complements follow? More... | |
| Article of the Day | |
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 The YuezhiYuezhi is the Chinese name—literally translated as "Moon Clan"—for the ancient Central Asian people who originally settled in the arid grasslands of the eastern Tarim Basin area in China. Often described as a nation of nomads, the Yuezhi migrated often before moving east during the 1st century CE to found the Kushan Empire. They later expanded northward and occupied parts of their original Tarim Basin territory, gaining a strategic position along what historic trade route? More... | |
| This Day in History | |
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 Kaprun Disaster Leaves 155 Dead (2000)High above the Austrian ski resort of Kaprun, a funicular railway car carrying over 160 people to a glacier caught fire after a defective heater ignited hydraulic brake fluid in the rear of the car. Only partway through a 2-mi (3.2-km) tunnel, the car came to a sudden halt. As the fire grew, the passengers were plunged into darkness and trapped behind inoperable doors. Almost all who managed to escape the burning car suffocated in the tunnel. How did the 12 survivors manage to escape to safety? More... | |
| Today's Birthday | |
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 Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (1922)An influential American writer, Vonnegut used wry, black humor to highlight the horrors of 20th-century civilization. His novels, which include Breakfast of Champions and Player Piano, are frequently satirical and pessimistic, yet morally urgent. The best-selling Slaughterhouse-Five was based on Vonnegut's experience of surviving the firebombing of Dresden. Which of Vonnegut's novels was accepted by the University of Chicago as his thesis for an anthropology degree? More... | |
| Quotation of the Day | |
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 In free society, art is not a weapon and it does not belong to the sphere of polemics and ideology. Artists are not engineers of the soul.John F. Kennedy (1917-1963) | |
| Idiom of the Day | |
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fingers crossed— An expression of hope that something one desires will come to pass or turn out to be true. A truncated version of the phrase "keep your fingers crossed." More... | |
| Today's Holiday | |
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 St. Martin's Day (Portugal) (2020)On the Feast of São Martinho, people roast chestnuts, drink red Portuguese wine, and butcher a pig. There is a St. Martin's Day Fair at Golegã, in Ribatejo, that features a famous horse show at which some of the country's finest thoroughbreds are displayed. Another well-known St. Martin's Day Fair is held at Penafiel, in Trás-os-Montes. The parades and celebrations that are held in towns and villages throughout Portugal on this day are usually more secular than Christian in flavor. More... | |
| Word Trivia | |
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Today's topic: mashbangers and mash - Sausage and mashed potatoes. More... farrago - From Latin, originally "a mash for feeding cattle"; later, figuratively, a medley or hodgepodge. More... mash - Originally malt mixed with hot water, to make wort. More... mush, moosh - Mush and moosh (nouns) are variations on mash. More... | |