Daily Content Archive
(as of Sunday, May 7, 2017)| Word of the Day | |||||||
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pandemonium
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| Daily Grammar Lesson | |
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Degrees of Comparison - AdverbsJust like adjectives, adverbs have comparative and superlative degrees; adverbs in their basic forms are sometimes known as being in the positive degree. What do superlative adverbs identify? More... | |
| Article of the Day | |
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 The Deadly Yellow RiverStretching 3,395 miles (5,464 km), the Yellow River, or Huang He, is the world's sixth longest river. Called the "the cradle of Chinese civilization" because its basin is the birthplace of the northern Chinese civilizations, the oft-flooding river has also earned the nickname "China's Sorrow." Its floods—more than 1,500 in the last 3 to 4 millennia—have caused some of the deadliest natural disasters in human history and claimed millions of lives. How was the river once used as a weapon of war? More... | |
| This Day in History | |
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 Suicidal Passenger Brings Down Pacific Air Lines Flight 773 (1964)In early May, Francisco Gonzales—a disturbed former member of the Philippine Olympic sailing team—bought a gun and life insurance and began talking about killing himself. He followed through on his threat during a flight to San Francisco, but he did more than just end his own life; he took the lives of all 44 people on board by shooting both the pilot and co-pilot, causing the plane to crash. What cockpit security regulation—adopted before the flight—only went into effect after the tragic crash? More... | |
| Today's Birthday | |
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 Rabindranath Tagore (1861)Tagore was a Bengali poet, philosopher, artist, writer, and composer whose works reshaped Bengali literature and music in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. His writings, which often exhibit rhythmic lyricism, colloquial language, and philosophical contemplation, received worldwide acclaim. He became Asia's first Nobel laureate when he received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913. Knighted by the British government in 1915, Tagore resigned the honor four years later in protest of what? More... | |
| Quotation of the Day | |
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 Misfortune, n.: The kind of fortune that never misses.Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914) | |
| Idiom of the Day | |
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in default of (something)— Due to the absence or lack of something; through the failure of something. More... | |
| Today's Holiday | |
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 Birthday of Tagore (2021)This date commemorates the birth of Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941), the great poet, philosopher, social reformer, dramatist, and musician of Calcutta, India. In 1913, he was the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize for literature. Tagore's birthday is celebrated with a festival of his poetry, plays, music, and dance dramas. There are discussions at schools and universities of his ideas on education and philosophy, and screenings of films based on Tagore's short stories and novels made by filmmaker and Calcutta native, Satyajit Ray. More... | |
| Word Trivia | |
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Today's topic: weddingepithalamium - A poem written to celebrate a wedding. More... confetti - It is the plural of Italian confetto, "small sweet," as it was originally real or imitation bon-bons thrown during a carnival or after a wedding. More... morganatic - A survival of an ancient Germanic marriage custom, a gift on the morning after the wedding from husband to wife called morgangeba, "morning" and "give"; it now describes a marriage between people of different social status, especially a man of superior rank and woman of inferior rank. More... nuptial - From Latin nuptiae, "wedding," from nubere, "to marry." More... | |