Daily Content Archive
(as of Friday, February 8, 2019)| Word of the Day | |||
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| Daily Grammar Lesson | |
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ConjugationConjugation refers to the way we inflect (change the form of) verbs to create particular meanings. What is grammatical tense? More... | |
| Article of the Day | |
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 The MuppetsIn 1954, Jim Henson got his first job as a local television puppeteer and soon created his alter ego, the debonair Kermit the Frog. He subsequently introduced several other "Muppets"—crosses between hand puppets and marionettes, with mobile, expressive faces and gesturing hands. In 1969, Henson and his associate Frank Oz brought Muppets like Ernie, Bert, Cookie Monster, and Big Bird to public television's Sesame Street and The Muppet Show. Why are most Muppets left-handed? More... | |
| This Day in History | |
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 Champion Race Horse Abducted, Never to be Seen Again (1983)Two years after his record-setting win at the Epsom Derby, the acclaimed Irish racehorse Shergar was loaded into a trailer at gunpoint and abducted by a gang of masked men. At that time, the retired 1981 "European Horse of the Year" commanded a stud fee upwards of £50,000 and was thus extremely valuable. The horse's owners refused to pay the demanded ransom, and police were unable to find him. Shergar was never seen again. Who may have taken him, and what is believed to have been his fate? More... | |
| Today's Birthday | |
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 Paula Modersohn-Becker (1876)Modersohn-Becker was a German painter who became an important early Expressionist despite her tragically short career. After studying in London and Paris, she helped introduce French Post-Impressionism into German art. She was greatly influenced by her stay at the artists' colony of Worpswede and later shifted from painting landscapes to portraits and still lifes, focusing on the expression of her feelings rather than a portrayal of reality. She died suddenly at 31, shortly after doing what? More... | |
| Quotation of the Day | |
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 Tolerance is a very dull virtue. It is boring. Unlike love, it has always had a bad press. It is negative. It merely means putting up with people, being able to stand things.E. M. Forster (1879-1970) | |
| Idiom of the Day | |
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all wound up— Very tense and/or nervous. Jittery. More... | |
| Today's Holiday | |
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 Torch Fights (2020)Torch fights are still popular in some rural areas in Korea to celebrate the first full moon of the Lunar New Year (Sol). Neighboring farming villages form their own teams and fight each other with torches made of burning bundles of straw. A hill is usually the designated battleground, and the torch-bearers gather there and wait for the full moon to rise, at which point a gong signals the beginning of the battle. Members of each team rush their opponents, brandishing their lit torches. While no one usually gets hurt in this game, participants generally go home with singed hair and clothing. More... | |
| Word Trivia | |
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Today's topic: punctuationem dash, en dash - The em dash is the long dash used in punctuation whose length is based on the width of the letter M; the en dash is shorter (the width of an N) and the hyphen is even shorter. More... punctual - From Latin punctum, "point," it can mean "pertaining to punctuation," or "of or relating to a point in space." More... square brackets, parentheses, braces - Square brackets were formerly called crotchets, round brackets are commonly called parentheses, and curly brackets are called braces; the punctuation called brackets derives from the bookshelf type, implying that, in writing, these marks "lift up" a section of a sentence. More... stigmeology - The art of punctuation. More... | |