Daily Content Archive
(as of Saturday, August 29, 2015)| Word of the Day | |||||||
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petrolatum
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| Daily Grammar Lesson | |
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Introducing Lists with ColonsThe most commonly cited use for a colon is to introduce a list of information. In many cases, the list is simply an extension of the existing sentence. What is this type of list known as? More... | |
| Article of the Day | |
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 Doughnuts or Donuts?Regardless of how you spell this sweet, deep-fried treat—doughnut or donut—its origins remain a mystery. Some claim that Dutch settlers brought it to North America. Others maintain that a Danish sea captain impaled a fried cake on a wheel spoke to free his hands during a storm and, thus, invented the doughnut's hole. The two most common types are ring-shaped doughnuts and filled doughnuts, flattened spheres injected with a sweet filling. In what countries can you get a meat-filled doughnut? More... | |
| This Day in History | |
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 Chemical Element Meitnerium Is Synthesized (1982)In 1982, a German research team led by Peter Armbruster and Gottfried Münzenberg at the Institute for Heavy Ion Research created a new element. While bombarding bismuth-209 atoms with iron-58 ions, they detected a single atom of what is now called meitnerium. Its atomic number is 109. The artificially-produced, radioactive element is named for Lise Meitner, the Austrian-Swedish physicist and mathematician who helped discover nuclear fission. What was its original name? More... | |
| Today's Birthday | |
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 John Locke (1632)Locke was an English philosopher and founder of British Empiricism. He summed up the Enlightenment in his belief in the middle class and its right to freedom of conscience and right to property, in his faith in science, and in his faith in the goodness of humanity. His influence on philosophy and political theory has been incalculable. His 1690 Two Treatises of Government influenced the American and French revolutions. He once fled to Holland under suspicion of involvement in what plot? More... | |
| Quotation of the Day | |
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 Man is by nature a political animal.Aristotle (384 BC-322 BC) | |
| Idiom of the Day | |
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horse and rabbit stew— A situation comprised of both crude or unpleasant things as well as those which are pleasing or beneficial, usually with the former in greater proportion to the latter. Used especially in reference to economics or business. More... | |
| Today's Holiday | |
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 Tennessee Walking Horse National Celebration (2020)This festival features 11 days and nights of pageantry and competition for more than 2,000 Tennessee Walking Horses in Shelbyville, Tennessee, the "Walking Horse Capital of the World." The horses compete for more than $650,000 in prizes and the title of World Grand Champion. The celebration is the nation's largest horse show in terms of spectators and the second largest in numbers of entered horses. Besides the horse shows, the celebration features an equestrian trade fair, horse sales, an arts-and-crafts festival, and America's largest barn decoration competition. More... | |
| Word Trivia | |
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Today's topic: raisincurrant - Developed from Middle English raison of Corauntz, "a raisin of Corinth," from where the fruit came. More... figgy pudding - From the dialect term fig, which meant "raisin." More... frail - Fifty pounds of raisins. More... passulate - To dry grapes to make raisins, from Latin passula, "raisins." More... | |