Daily Content Archive
(as of Thursday, June 16, 2016)| Word of the Day | |||||||
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polliwog
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| Daily Grammar Lesson | |
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Modal Auxiliary Verbs - WillAs a modal auxiliary verb, "will" is particularly versatile, having several different meanings and functions, including to form future tenses. It is also used to express an expected hypothetical outcome in what type of sentence? More... | |
| Article of the Day | |
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 Seizure Response DogsWhen their epileptic handlers experience seizures, these response dogs come to the rescue by pulling away dangerous objects, attempting to rouse them if they lose consciousness, and even summoning aid by finding another person or activating a medical alert or pre-programmed phone. Because epilepsy is such a wide-ranging condition, each dog is trained for a specific individual's needs. Studies in which dogs were trained to anticipate their owners' impending seizures have shown what? More... | |
| This Day in History | |
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 Cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova Becomes First Woman in Space (1963)Tereshkova was a Soviet cosmonaut who became the first woman to fly in space. In 1963, she was the solo pilot of a three-day flight aboard Vostok 6, orbiting the Earth 48 times. Her flight was her only experience in space, and she left the Soviet space program soon after and married cosmonaut Andriyan Nikolayev. Their daughter, Elena, born a year later, was the first child of parents who had both been in space. What was Tereshkova's job before she was recruited as a cosmonaut? More... | |
| Today's Birthday | |
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 George Gaylord Simpson (1902)Simpson, an American paleontologist, helped develop the modern biological theory of evolution, drawing on paleontology, genetics, ecology, and natural selection. His contributions to evolutionary theory include a detailed classification of mammals, which is still the standard, and the discovery of the migratory and evolutionary patterns of the prehistoric fauna of the Americas, from which he deduced that species reached adaptive peaks and suffered accidental dispersal. What word did he coin? More... | |
| Quotation of the Day | |
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 If any one faculty of our nature may be called more wonderful than the rest, I do think it is memory...The memory is sometimes so retentive, so serviceable, so obedient; at others, so bewildered and so weak…We are, to be sure, a miracle every way; but our powers of recollecting and of forgetting do seem peculiarly past finding out.Jane Austen (1775-1817) | |
| Idiom of the Day | |
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pop into (someone's) head— To occur or form suddenly in someone's mind, as a thought, idea, or revelation. More... | |
| Today's Holiday | |
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 Father's Day (2019)Sonora Louise Smart Dodd from Spokane, Washington, suggested to her minister in 1910 that a day be set aside for honoring fathers. The Ministerial Association and the Spokane YMCA picked up on the idea, and in 1924 Father's Day received the support of President Calvin Coolidge. But it wasn't until 1966 that a presidential proclamation established Father's Day as the third Sunday in June. Although it began as a religious celebration, today it is primarily an occasion for showing appreciation through gift-giving. More... | |
| Word Trivia | |
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Today's topic: socketball, socket - On a clothing snap, there is a ball and a socket. More... socket - From Middle English, first as "head of a spear, resembling a plowshare," from an Anglo-Norman French diminutive of French soc, "plowshare." More... acetabulum - The socket of the hip bone, into which the head of the femur fits. More... birn - The socket in a clarinet or other woodwind into which the mouthpiece fits. More... | |