Daily Content Archive
(as of Friday, November 27, 2020)| Word of the Day | |||||||
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hard-bitten
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| Article of the Day | |
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 SatiSati is an Indian funerary practice in which a widow immolates herself on her husband's funeral pyre. Though its stated purpose is to purge the sins of the couple and ensure their reunion in the afterlife, the practice has been encouraged by the low status of widowhood. Practiced since the 4th century BCE, sati became widespread in India in the 17th and 18th centuries, and not all instances were voluntary. Today, it occurs rarely, and mostly in remote areas. When was the practice outlawed? More... | |
| This Day in History | |
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 Alger Hiss Is Released from Prison (1954)Though Hiss maintained his innocence until his death in 1996, the controversy surrounding his case persists today. Once a US government official, Hiss was accused before the House Un-American Activities Committee of spying for Russia. Though he could not be tried for espionage under the statute of limitations, he was convicted of perjury and served 44 months in prison. Many believed he had been wrongly convicted. However, Soviet files released in 1996 seem to implicate him. Who was his accuser? More... | |
| Today's Birthday | |
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 Anders Celsius (1701)Celsius was a Swedish astronomer who published observations of the aurora borealis and supervised the building of an observatory at Uppsala, Sweden, where he pioneered the measurement of the brightness of stars. Today, however, he is better known for an invention that has been adopted by almost the entire world—the centigrade, or Celsius, thermometer. Originally, his temperature scale had 0 as its boiling point and 100 as its freezing point. Who reversed the numbers after Celsius died? More... | |
| Quotation of the Day | |
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 Poverty doesn't bring unhappiness; it brings degradation.George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) | |
| Today's Holiday | |
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 Black Friday (United States) (2020)Black Friday usually refers either to the infamous Wall Street Panic of September 24, 1869, when Jay Gould and James Fisk tried to corner the gold market, or to September 19, 1873, when stock failures caused the Panic of 1873. But shoppers and retailers in the United States also refer to the day after Thanksgiving as Black Friday because it marks the beginning of the Christmas commercial season and is traditionally a frenetic day of shopping. More... | |