Daily Content Archive
(as of Sunday, February 10, 2019)| Word of the Day | |||||||
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housebound
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| Article of the Day | |
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 BioacousticsBioacoustics is the study of the relation between living organisms and sound, focusing on the neurophysiological, anatomical, and evolutionary basis of sounds produced and detected by animals, especially those involved in communication. It was established as a scientific discipline by Slovene biologist Ivan Regen, whose experiments with crickets in the early 20th century proved that insects respond to acoustic stimuli produced by other individuals. What animal sounds are humans unable to hear? More... | |
| This Day in History | |
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 Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman Opens on Broadway (1949)Considered Miller's masterpiece, Death of a Salesman won a Pulitzer Prize, a Tony Award for Best Play, and the New York Drama Critics' Circle Best Play award in its first year. An unconventional tragedy, it tells the story of the last day of the life of Willy Loman, a failed salesman betrayed by his own hollow values. The play follows Loman's stream of consciousness. As he talks to people from his past, those from his present wonder if he is unraveling. What is the play's final line? 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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 Of course poets have morals and manners of their own, and custom is no argument with them.Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) | |
| Today's Holiday | |
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 Feast of St. Paul's Shipwreck (2021)This feast is a commemoration in Malta of the shipwreck of St. Paul on the island in 60 CE, an event told about in the New Testament. When storms drove the ship aground, Paul was welcomed by the "barbarous people" (meaning they were not Greco-Romans). According to legend, he got their attention when a snake bit him on the hand but did him no harm, and he then healed people of diseases. Paul is the patron saint of Malta and snakebite victims. The day is a public holiday, and is observed with family gatherings and religious ceremonies and processions. More... | |