Daily Content Archive
(as of Thursday, April 12, 2018)| Word of the Day | |||
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| Daily Grammar Lesson | |
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Using Absolute PhrasesWe generally use absolute phrases at the beginning of a sentence to introduce additional information, or at the end of a sentence to provide a final comment on the sentence as a whole. It is also possible to use an absolute phrase in the middle of a sentence. What does that placement add to the sentence? More... | |
| Article of the Day | |
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 Medieval FortificationsIn the thousand years leading up to the Renaissance, developments in the construction and design of defensive fortifications changed warfare. As new tactics, weapons, and siege techniques were created to breach them, fortifications were modified to maintain their effectiveness. Along with walls, moats, and drawbridges, soldiers used measures such as machicolations—openings between a wall and a parapet through which stones and boiling water could be hurled—and killing fields, which were what? More... | |
| This Day in History | |
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 Liberian President William R. Tolbert Is Killed in Military Coup (1980)Liberia was founded in the 1820s by former slaves from the US, and tensions between the Americo-Liberian minority and the indigenous majority have persisted since that time. On April 12, 1980, a group of soldiers led by Samuel Kanyon Doe stormed the executive mansion, killing Americo-Liberian President William R. Tolbert and 27 other government leaders. Doe, a member of the ethnic Krahn tribe, then declared himself president. How had a rice scandal seriously undermined Tolbert? More... | |
| Today's Birthday | |
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 Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford (1550)A brilliantly gifted linguist and one of the most dashing figures of his time, Oxford was also reckless, hot-tempered, and disastrously spendthrift. He was the patron of an acting company and wrote highly praised poems and plays in his earlier years, though none of the plays are known to have survived. He is considered by some to be the true author of Shakespeare's plays, since his own literary output apparently ceased just before Shakespeare's began. Which of his writings have survived? More... | |
| Quotation of the Day | |
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 Let me not then die ingloriously and without a struggle, but let me first do some great thing that shall be told among men hereafter.Homer (900 BC-800 BC) | |
| Idiom of the Day | |
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naff off— A forceful exclamation of dismissal, disdain, or impatience. Primarily heard in UK. More... | |
| Today's Holiday | |
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 Halifax Day (2025)Also known as Halifax Resolves Day, Halifax Resolutions Day, Halifax Independence Day, or Halifax Resolutions of Independence Day, this is the day on which, in the spring of 1776, North Carolina's delegates to the Second Continental Congress were given permission to join with representatives from other colonies in declaring their independence from British rule. The Halifax Resolutions helped lay the groundwork for the American Revolution. Halifax Day observances take place in Halifax, North Carolina, with reenactments and living history camps. More... | |
| Word Trivia | |
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Today's topic: tombepitaph - From Greek epi, "upon, over," and taphos, "tomb" or "funeral." More... lair - First meant "grave, tomb," or "place where one sleeps." More... pall, pallbearer - Pallbearer is based on pall, which was first a cloth spread over a coffin, hearse, or tomb. More... cromlech - Is Welsh for "arched stone" and means "any megalithic chamber tomb." More... | |