Daily Content Archive
(as of Saturday, May 16, 2015)| Word of the Day | |||||||
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ossify
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| Daily Grammar Lesson | |
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Past Perfect Continuous TenseThe past perfect continuous tense is used to describe an action that began and was still in progress in the past before another past action started. How does it differ from the past perfect tense? More... | |
| Article of the Day | |
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 CobaltCobalt is a silver-white, lustrous, hard, brittle metal that is chemically active and rarely occurs uncombined in nature. It is, however, often found in meteoric metal. Cobalt compounds have been used for centuries to impart a rich blue color to glass, glazes, and ceramics. The element has been detected in Egyptian sculpture and Persian jewelry from the third millennium BCE. The word cobalt is derived from the German word for "goblin." Why was the element thus named? More... | |
| This Day in History | |
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 Junko Tabei Becomes First Woman to Summit Mount Everest (1975)Tabei founded a climbing club for women in Japan in 1969 and, by 1972, was a recognized mountain climber. When Japanese newspaper and television companies sponsored an all-female expedition to climb Mount Everest, Tabei was one of the 15 women selected to go. In 1975, after months of training and preparation, the 35-year-old mother of two became the first woman to reach Everest's 29,035-foot (8,850-m) summit. What disaster partway up the slope nearly ended the climb? More... | |
| Today's Birthday | |
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 Henry Jaynes Fonda (1905)Henry Fonda was an American film actor who started out on Broadway. His role in the 1934 play The Farmer Takes a Wife led to a role in the film version, and more than 100 other films followed. He portrayed honest men in movies such as The Grapes of Wrath (1940) and won an Academy Award in 1982 for his last film, On Golden Pond, made with his daughter, Jane. Married five times, he was also the father of actor Peter Fonda. Whose murder did Fonda witness as a teen? More... | |
| Quotation of the Day | |
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 If one sticks too rigidly to one's principles, one would hardly see anybody.Agatha Christie (1890-1976) | |
| Idiom of the Day | |
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have good antennae— To be very sensitive (to something); to have a keen sense of detection or perception. Likened to the antennae of (e.g.) an insect, which are extremely sensitive to environmental stimuli. More... | |
| Today's Holiday | |
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 Florence Musical May (Maggio Musicale Fiorentino) (2020)The Florence May Festival was first held in 1933, and it wasn't long before it had established itself as one of the most important international festivals in Italy. It offers chamber and symphonic music, ballet, and dance, and is recognized as a pioneer in its efforts to revive rare foreign and Italian operas. Most of the larger events are held in the Teatro della Pergola or the more modern Teatro Comunale, home of the festival's resident opera company. The festival regularly commissions new opera and dance productions. More... | |
| Word Trivia | |
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Today's topic: illnessaccession - Can be the "onset of illness or a powerful feeling." More... allopathy, homeopathy - Allopathy is treatment to suppress the symptoms of illness using the principle of opposites, while homeopathy encourages, rather than suppresses, the body's reaction to an illness. More... idiopathic disease - An illness of unknown cause. More... languor - Any distressed condition, such as illness, sorrow, fatigue, etc. More... | |