Daily Content Archive
(as of Sunday, March 29, 2015)| Word of the Day | |||||||
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ostentatious
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| Daily Grammar Lesson | |
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Possessive DeterminersPossessive determiners, also known as possessive adjectives, are a class of determiners that are used to modify nouns to denote possession. We use a different possessive determiner to correspond with each personal pronoun. What are the main possessive determiners in English? More... | |
| Article of the Day | |
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 Flea MarketsFlea markets are gatherings of buyers and vendors in open-market layouts. The vast majority of flea markets in rural areas sell goods that are secondhand, while newer but usually inexpensive items can be found at larger urban markets. The original flea market is likely the extant Marché aux puces in the northern suburbs of Paris, named after the flea-infested clothing and rags originally sold there in the 17th cent. What is a car boot sale? More... | |
| This Day in History | |
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 Gustav III of Sweden Dies of Infected Gunshot Wound (1792)Gustav III was King of Sweden from 1771 to 1792. Having inherited a weakened Swedish throne, he established a new constitution that increased the crown's power. His numerous enlightened reforms antagonized the nobility, and when a group of Swedish officers mutinied during his unpopular war on Russia, he reinstated absolute monarchy. Gustav planned to form a league of European monarchs to oppose the French Revolution, but Swedish nobles had him assassinated. Where was Gustav when he was shot? More... | |
| Today's Birthday | |
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 Ernst Jünger (1895)Early in his career, Jünger, a German writer and WWI veteran, published novels based on his army experience. Strongly influenced by German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, they glorified war and its sacrifice as the greatest physical and mental stimulants. He later opposed Hitler and rejected his own militarism, expressing instead a desire for peace in his wartime diaries and in futuristic novels like On the Marble Cliffs, an allegorical attack on Nazism. What is Jünger's best known work? More... | |
| Quotation of the Day | |
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 One man's ways may be as good as another's, but we all like our own best.Jane Austen (1775-1817) | |
| Idiom of the Day | |
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breathe easily— To relax. To be free from worry. More... | |
| Today's Holiday | |
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 Madagascar Martyrs' Day (2018)Madagascar Martyrs' Day memorializes those who died in the Revolt of 1947 against the French. Madagascar had been a French colony since 1896 and then was named an overseas territory within the French Union in the 1946 constitution. On March 29, 1947, the people staged a nationalist uprising against colonial forces. Casualties from the conflict were reported as high as 80,000. French military courts tried the leaders of the revolt and executed 20. On March 29, the Malagasy government and people remember those patriots who sacrificed their lives for their country's freedom. More... | |
| Word Trivia | |
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Today's topic: lightningnimbostratus cloud - Can drop precipitation but has no lightning or thunder. More... artillery - A poetic term for thunder and lightning. More... coup de foudre - A sudden unforeseen event or instantaneous and overwhelming passion, such as love at first sight; it is French, literally, "stroke of lightning." More... lightning - Etymologically, lightning is simply something that illuminates or "lightens" the sky, a contraction of the earlier "lightening." More... | |