Daily Content Archive
(as of Wednesday, May 16, 2018)| Word of the Day | |||
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| Daily Grammar Lesson | |
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The Modal VerbsA modal auxiliary verb is used to change the meaning of other verbs (commonly known as main verbs) by expressing modality—that is, asserting (or denying) possibility, likelihood, ability, permission, obligation, or future intention. What are the nine "true" modal auxiliary verbs? More... | |
| Article of the Day | |
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 Cupid and PsycheThe tale of Cupid, the Roman god of love, and Psyche, his mortal lover, first appeared as one of the stories in Lucius Apuleius' second-century novel alternately known as The Golden Ass or Metamorphoses—the only Latin novel to survive in its entirety. In the folktale, the jealous goddess Venus asks her son Cupid to use his arrows to cause a beautiful mortal woman named Psyche to fall in love with the vilest creature on Earth. What happens when Cupid goes to carry out his mission? More... | |
| This Day in History | |
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 Junko Tabei Becomes First Woman to Summit Mount Everest (1975)Tabei founded a climbing club for women in Japan in 1969 and, by 1972, was a recognized mountain climber. When Japanese newspaper and television companies sponsored an all-female expedition to climb Mount Everest, Tabei was one of the 15 women selected to go. In 1975, after months of training and preparation, the 35-year-old mother of two became the first woman to reach Everest's 29,035-foot (8,850-m) summit. What disaster partway up the slope nearly ended the climb? More... | |
| Today's Birthday | |
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 Maria Gaetana Agnesi (1718)Agnesi was an Italian mathematician and philosopher. A child prodigy, she mastered several languages at an early age, and her proud father often held academic gatherings at which she spoke. When she was 9, she delivered a lengthy speech in Latin on the topic of women's right to education. At 20, she withdrew from society to focus on her studies and went on to produce her noted two-volume mathematical treatise Analytical Institutions. What appointment did she later receive from the pope? More... | |
| Quotation of the Day | |
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 If you would taste love, drink of the pure stream that youth pours out at your feet. Do not wait till it has become a muddy river before you stoop to catch its waves.Jerome K. Jerome (1859-1927) | |
| Idiom of the Day | |
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on (one's) tod— Without or not near to anyone else; on one's own; all alone. A shortening of the Cockney rhyming slang "on one's Tod Sloan," referring to a once-famous American horse jockey who fell into disrepute in the early 20th century and died penniless and alone. Primarily heard in UK. More... | |
| Today's Holiday | |
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 St. Brendan's Day (2023)St. Brendan, who lived in the 6th century and is one of the most popular Irish saints, is alleged to be the author of Navigatio Brendani (the story of a journey to a land across the ocean). No one, including St. Brendan, knew where he had been when he returned, but a number of legends developed over the centuries. In 1977, an Irishman named Tim Severin built a boat out of leather as described in Navigatio and set out to follow St. Brendan's instructions. He ended up in Newfoundland, giving credence to the theory that St. Brendan reached America 1,000 years before Columbus. More... | |
| Word Trivia | |
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Today's topic: technicalspod - A studious person who is quite socially inept or dull or a person who pursues an unfashionable, technical, or esoteric interest with obsessive dedication. More... masterpiece - Originally, it was used in a technical or academic sense to apply to a work that was presented to a medieval guild for qualification as a "master." More... technical, technic - Technical is based on technic, an adjective meaning "pertaining to art," from Greek tekhne, "art." More... technicize - To make technical. More... | |