Daily Content Archive
(as of Saturday, May 20, 2017)| Word of the Day | |||
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| Daily Grammar Lesson | |
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Using Interrogative PronounsInterrogative pronouns are used in interrogative sentences to ask questions, functioning either as the subject or object of such sentences. Most often, interrogative pronouns are used in what type of questions? More... | |
| Article of the Day | |
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| This Day in History | |
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 Cartographer Abraham Ortelius Issues the First Modern Atlas (1570)Prior to 1570, maps were often unreliable, illegible, and unwieldy. When Ortelius published his Theatrum orbis terrarium, it was the first comprehensive, easy-to-use, and fairly up-to-date collection of world maps. It drew from the works of 87 cartographers, all of whom were credited. Demand was immediate and persisted for decades, during which time dozens of editions were published in several languages. In addition to practical contemporary maps, Ortelius published what? More... | |
| Today's Birthday | |
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 James Maitland "Jimmy" Stewart (1908)Stewart was an American actor known for his self-effacing screen persona. His slow, halting line delivery initially made him difficult to cast, but his idealistic characters in films such as Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939) soon endeared him to audiences, and he won an Oscar in 1940. His role as the quintessential small-town man helped make It's a Wonderful Life (1946) a Christmas classic. During World War II, Stewart served as a bomber pilot and attained what military rank? More... | |
| Quotation of the Day | |
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| Idiom of the Day | |
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meatball surgery— Battlefield surgery that is performed hastily so as to quickly stabilize a patient and prevent their imminent death. Popularized (and possibly coined) by H. Richard Hornberger in his semi-autobiographical novel M*A*S*H, which focused on doctors serving in a fictional mobile army surgical hospital during the Korean War. Primarily heard in US. More... | |
| Today's Holiday | |
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 East Timor Independence Day (2025)On May 20, 2002, about half of a small island in the Lesser Sundra group became the Democratic Republic of East Timor, after being an unwilling and brutalized province of Indonesia for the previous two decades, and under Portuguese rule for hundreds of years before that. Among the approximately 200,000 attendees at the independence ceremony in the capital city of Dili were Bishop Carlos Belo and Jose Ramos Horta, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1996 for their efforts toward building the peaceful independence of this Roman Catholic region within Indonesia, the largest Muslim country in the world. More... | |
| Word Trivia | |
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Today's topic: trickssnow park - An area of a piste, or ski trail, created for snowboarders and skiers to do tricks. More... intricate - From Latin in-, "into," and tricae, "tricks, perplexities." More... monkeyshines - A combination of monkey and shines, "capers, tricks." More... whist - The game was originally called whisk, from "whisking away" the cards after the tricks had been taken. More... | |