Daily Content Archive
(as of Friday, July 9, 2021)Word of the Day | |||||||
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bauble
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Daily Grammar Lesson | |
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The Infinitive Mood and the Emphatic MoodThere are two sub-categories that are sometimes described as moods in different grammar guides: the "infinitive mood" and the "emphatic mood." The "infinitive mood" merely refers to a verb being put into its infinitive form—that is, the base form with the particle "to." What is the "emphatic mood"? More... |
Article of the Day | |
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MiddensAlso known as a kitchen midden or shell mound, a midden is a refuse heap containing the waste products of day-to-day human life left by a prehistoric settlement. Often found in coastal environments, middens were first studied in Denmark in 1848. Because their contents include artifacts that can be dated, they help archaeologists to determine the mode of life and technology of ancient peoples, typically from the late Mesolithic period. How do middens help to preserve the materials they contain? More... |
This Day in History | |
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Andy Warhol's Campbell's Soup Cans Exhibition Opens (1962)One of the most influential artists of the late 20th century, Warhol began painting in the late 1950s and received sudden notoriety in 1962, when he exhibited 32 silkscreened paintings of Campbell's soup cans in a California art gallery. The blatantly mundane content of the exhibition ran contrary to the abstract expressionist aesthetic of the time and generated much controversy, establishing Warhol as the leading exponent of the pop art movement. How did the soup cans differ from one another? More... |
Today's Birthday | |
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Franz Boas (1858)Boas was a German-American anthropologist. Trained in physics, he was part of an early scientific expedition to Baffin Island, where he turned to studying Eskimo culture. He is largely credited with establishing anthropology as an academic discipline in the US, and his achievements in anthropology are virtually unrivaled. It is largely because of his work that anthropologists today attribute human differences to cultural, rather than genetic, factors. Who were some of his famous students? More... |
Quotation of the Day | |
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I would permit no man, no matter what his color might be, to narrow and degrade my soul by making me hate him. Booker T. Washington (1856-1915) |
Idiom of the Day | |
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(something) won't get (someone) anywhere— Something, typically a certain behavior, will not help someone progress or succeed in any way. More... |
Today's Holiday | |
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Martyrdom of the Bab (2024)The Martyrdom of the Bab is a solemn commemoration of the day in 1850 when the Bab, the first prophet of the Baha'i faith, was executed in Tabriz, Persia (now Iran). Prayers and readings mark the Baha'i holy day, and work is suspended. The Bab was repeatedly exiled and imprisoned by Muslim rulers and priests who opposed the idea that the Bab would provide another avenue to the truth. A committee of priests demanded the Bab's execution; his body was retrieved by his followers and eventually placed in a mausoleum on Mount Carmel in Haifa, Israel, where the Baha'i headquarters is today. More... |
Word Trivia | |
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Today's topic: tortureordeal - From Old English ordel, "judgment," figuratively, an experience testing endurance, patience, courage, etc.—also a test of guilt or innocence that was one of severe pain or torture. More... torment - Comes from a Latin word, tormentum, for an instrument of torture. More... tortuous, torturous - Tortuous is "winding, crooked, full of twists and turns," and torturous, based on "torture," is "painful, characterized by suffering." More... travel - From Latin trepaliare, "torture," it evolved into "journey" from the allusion to the inevitable trouble of medieval travel. More... |