Daily Content Archive
(as of Monday, April 16, 2018)| Word of the Day | |||||||
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waffle
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| Article of the Day | |
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 Exquisite CorpseExquisite corpse is an exercise in which a collection of words or images is assembled by several participants, each of whom adds to a composition by either following a predetermined sequence—such as adjective-noun-adverb-verb-article-adjective-noun—or by looking at the end of the previous entry. The name of the game is derived from the phrase that French Surrealists created when they first played it in 1925: "Le cadavre exquis boira le vin nouveau," which means what? More... | |
| This Day in History | |
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 Chinese Submarine Suffers Mysterious Accident that Kills 70 (2003)A week and a half after a mysterious event left the entire 70-man crew of the Chinese Ming-class submarine No. 361 dead at their posts, the stricken vessel was spotted by fishermen and towed to shore. The official explanation for the disaster is that the crew suffocated when diesel engines failed to shut down while the vessel was submerged. What had allowed the crippled submarine to drift for over a week without raising concern? More... | |
| Today's Birthday | |
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 Sir John Franklin (1786)Franklin was a British Royal Navy officer and Arctic explorer who also served as governor of Tasmania. He is best remembered for presiding over a doomed expedition in the 1840s to chart the Northwest Passage through the Canadian Arctic. He and his crew fell prey to a host of ills, including starvation, disease, and lead poisoning. Of the entire expedition of nearly 130 men, not one is known to have survived. What evidence suggests that some of the crew members may have resorted to cannibalism? More... | |
| Quotation of the Day | |
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 How is it that the poets have said so many fine things about our first love, so few about our later love? Are their first poems their best? Or are not those the best which come from their fuller thought, their larger experience, their deeper-rooted affections?George Eliot (1819-1880) | |
| Idiom of the Day | |
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more haste, less speed— Acting too quickly and without due dilligence, focus, and attention to detail will result in avoidable mistakes and thus require even more time to complete the task satisfactorily. (The logic of the phrase is essentially "too much haste results in less overall speed.") Primarily heard in UK. More... | |
| Today's Holiday | |
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 Sechseläuten (2018)This colorful springtime festival in Zurich, Switzerland, ushers in spring by exploding the Böögg ("snowman"), the symbol of winter. Sechseläuten means the "six-o'clock ringing." On Monday, members of the guilds parade through the city in medieval costumes, accompanied by bands. Everyone converges at six that evening; the bells ring, groups on horseback gallop around the Böögg (which is stuffed with cotton wadding and firecrackers) to the music of a hunting march, and then the Böögg explodes and burns. Torchlight parades go on into the night, and feasts are held at guild halls. More... | |
| Match Up | |
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| Mismatch | |
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| In the News | |
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These hummingbirds aim their singing tail feathers to wow matesThere’s more subtlety than humans have realized in dropping out of the sky so fast your tail feathers sing. Male Costa’s hummingbirds in western North America are masters of the tail-screaming courtship plunge. Acoustic cameras recorded these repeated stunts and ... More... | |