Daily Content Archive
(as of Saturday, November 9, 2019)| Word of the Day | |||||||
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honorable
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| Daily Grammar Lesson | |
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Participle Phrases in Initial PositionWhere a participle phrase appears in a sentence changes the way we punctuate it, as does its importance to the meaning of the sentence as a whole. When a participle phrase occurs in the initial position, how is it usually separated from the rest of the sentence? More... | |
| Article of the Day | |
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 The Brain in a VatFor millennia, philosophers have grappled with various versions of the "brain-in-a-vat" scenario. A thought experiment, it raises questions about the individual’s ability to know anything, since a brain suspended in a vat of life-sustaining liquid and connected to a computer that provides it with electrical impulses identical to those the brain normally receives would never be able to determine whether it is in a skull or a vat. What popular film trilogy is loosely based on this concept? More... | |
| This Day in History | |
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 Great Lakes Storm Reaches Peak Ferocity (1913)The deadliest and most destructive natural disaster ever to hit the Great Lakes region, the "Big Blow," "Freshwater Fury," or "White Hurricane," as it is variously known, was a blizzard with hurricane-force winds that battered parts of the US and Canada for several days in November 1913. Approximately 250 people died in the violent storm—all of them sailors who perished when their ships were wrecked or sunk on the lakes. How tall were the swells that vessels had to contend with during the storm? More... | |
| Today's Birthday | |
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 Benjamin Banneker (1731)Banneker was a free African American who was largely self-educated in astronomy and mathematics. In 1761, he drew attention by building a wooden clock that kept precise time for some 50 years. He accurately predicted a solar eclipse in 1789 and began publishing annually the Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia Almanac and Ephemeris, sending an early copy to Thomas Jefferson to counter the belief that African Americans were intellectually inferior. How did Jefferson respond? More... | |
| Quotation of the Day | |
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 To seek to extinguish anger utterly is but a bravery of the Stoics.Francis Bacon (1561-1626) | |
| Idiom of the Day | |
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be little love lost between (two people)— Of two people, to dislike one another very much. More... | |
| Today's Holiday | |
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 Kristallnacht (2021)Kristallnacht (Crystal Night, or Night of the Broken Glass) gets its name from the shattered glass that littered the streets on November 9, 1938, when the windows of Jewish-owned shops and homes were systematically smashed throughout German and Austrian cities in a frenzy of destruction that resulted in the arrest and deportation of about 30,000 Jews. It marked the beginning of the Nazis' plan to rob the Jews of their possessions and to force them out of their homes and neighborhoods. Today, Jews everywhere observe the anniversary of this infamous event by holding special memorial services. More... | |
| Word Trivia | |
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Today's topic: intensityheat - As a preliminary race for a sporting contest, it is so called because of its intensity. More... crescendo - Often mistakenly used to mean "reaching a pinnacle" when, in fact, it should be used only to describe a gradual increase in intensity or volume. More... resonate, resound - Resonate means "to expand, to intensity, or amplify the sound of," whereas resound means "to throw back, repeat the sound of." More... fervency, fervor - The intensity of heat or feeling can be described as fervency, from Latin fervere, "boil"; an instance of this heat or feeling is fervor. More... | |