Daily Content Archive
(as of Sunday, July 9, 2017)| Word of the Day | |||||||
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stalwart
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| Daily Grammar Lesson | |
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Adverbs of MannerAdverbs of manner are used to tell us how something happens or is done. They can modify verbs, adjectives, or clauses of a sentence. Adverbs of manner are very often formed from adjectives by simply adding what suffix? More... | |
| Article of the Day | |
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 The Voynich ManuscriptThe Voynich manuscript, which likely dates to the late 15th or early 16th century, is a mysterious illustrated book written by an unknown author in an unidentified script and language. Although its meaning has eluded even expert cryptographers, giving weight to the theory that the book is simply an elaborate hoax, the text follows patterns similar to those of natural languages, and the book thus remains the subject of intense study. What are some theories about its origins and meaning? More... | |
| This Day in History | |
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 US President Zachary Taylor Dies in Office (1850)On a hot 4th of July in Washington, DC, Taylor—who had been US president for just 16 months—enjoyed a cool snack of cherries and milk. Five days later, he was dead. The official cause of death was listed as gastroenteritis, an inflammation of the stomach and intestines that can be caused by food poisoning. His remains were exhumed in 1991 and showed no evidence of foul play. According to one historian, Taylor could have recovered had he not been bled, blistered, and given what cocktail of drugs? More... | |
| Today's Birthday | |
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 Franz Boas (1858)Boas was a German-American anthropologist. Trained in physics, he was part of an early scientific expedition to Baffin Island, where he turned to studying Eskimo culture. He is largely credited with establishing anthropology as an academic discipline in the US, and his achievements in anthropology are virtually unrivaled. It is largely because of his work that anthropologists today attribute human differences to cultural, rather than genetic, factors. Who were some of his famous students? More... | |
| Quotation of the Day | |
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 Enough is equal to a feast.Henry Fielding (1707-1754) | |
| Idiom of the Day | |
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fox's sleep— A state of apparent sleep (or feigned indifference) in which someone is actually aware of everything going on around him or her. Alludes to the idea that foxes sleep with one eye open and thus are always at the ready. More... | |
| Today's Holiday | |
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 Martyrdom of the Bab (2017)The Martyrdom of the Bab is a solemn commemoration of the day in 1850 when the Bab, the first prophet of the Baha'i faith, was executed in Tabriz, Persia (now Iran). Prayers and readings mark the Baha'i holy day, and work is suspended. The Bab was repeatedly exiled and imprisoned by Muslim rulers and priests who opposed the idea that the Bab would provide another avenue to the truth. A committee of priests demanded the Bab's execution; his body was retrieved by his followers and eventually placed in a mausoleum on Mount Carmel in Haifa, Israel, where the Baha'i headquarters is today. More... | |
| Word Trivia | |
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Today's topic: signsconjecture - First meant "the interpretation of omens or signs" or "divination," and it literally means "to throw together," that is, to produce a theory by putting together a number of facts. More... diacritic - From Greek diakrinein, "distinguish from," it denotes marks or signs that distinguish different values or sounds (pronunciations) of a letter. More... semiopathy - A tendency to read humorously inappropriate meanings into signs. More... sigla - The words for signs and abbreviations representing words. More... | |