Daily Content Archive
(as of Saturday, May 5, 2018)| Word of the Day | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
slicker
| |||||||
| Daily Grammar Lesson | |
|---|---|
Defining Grammatical TenseGrammatical tense refers to the conjugation of a verb to reflect its place in time—that is, when the action occurred. Verbs in their basic form inherently describe the present time, and they can be conjugated into a unique form that describes the past. What can we then use to create different aspects of the past and present tenses? More... | |
| Article of the Day | |
|---|---|
 Box JellyfishFound in waters near Hawaii, Australia, the Philippines, Vietnam, and many other tropical areas, box jellyfish are named for their somewhat cube-shaped bodies but are best known for the extremely powerful venom possessed by some of their species, including Chironex fleckeri and Carukia barnesi, two of the most venomous creatures in the animal kingdom. Stings from such species are excruciatingly painful and often fatal. What animal eats box jellyfish and is unaffected by the venom? More... | |
| This Day in History | |
|---|---|
 First American in Space (1961)In 1961, 23 days after Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human to orbit Earth, astronaut Alan Shepard became the first American to be launched into space. Shepard's suborbital flight—part of the US space program Project Mercury—reached a height of 115 miles (185 km). He performed several maneuvers of his capsule, Freedom 7, but returned after only a 15-minute flight. Although Gagarin was the first human in space, Shepard was the first to return in what way? More... | |
| Today's Birthday | |
|---|---|
 Karl Marx (1818)Though largely ignored during his lifetime, Marx was perhaps one of the most influential figures in history. His ideas, particularly those he expounded in his two most notable works, The Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital, have become the core intellectual tradition for communism and socialism, and many scholars consider him the founder of economic history and sociology. His philosophy significantly influenced communist thinking for the next century. What anarchist was his enemy? More... | |
| Quotation of the Day | |
|---|---|
 You will hear people say that poverty is the best spur to the artist. They have never felt the iron of it in their flesh. They do not know how mean it makes you. It exposes you to endless humiliation, it cuts your wings, it eats into your soul like a cancer.W. Somerset Maugham (1874-1965) | |
| Idiom of the Day | |
|---|---|
Freudian slip— Any inadvertent verbal or written mistake that reveals, or can be construed as revealing, an unconscious or repressed intention, belief, thought, attitude, etc. Named for the Sigmund Freud, considered the founding father of psychoanalysis, whose work largely focused on the unconscious and repressed elements of the human psyche. More... | |
| Today's Holiday | |
|---|---|
 Kodomo-no-Hi (2023)Kodomo-no-Hi is a national holiday in Japan that was known as Boys' Day from the 9th century, but became a day for both boys and girls in 1948. Today, the day is observed largely with family picnics. Households with sons erect tall bamboo poles outside the home and attach streamers in the shape of carp for each son. The carp supposedly represents the strength, courage, and determination shown in its upstream journeys. The festivities are part of Golden Week, which also includes Greenery Day and Japan Constitution Memorial Day. More... | |
| Word Trivia | |
|---|---|
Today's topic: strivecompete - Comes from Latin competere, "come together," but in later Latin, it developed the sense "strive together," which was the basis for the English term. More... repugn, repugnant - Repugn means "to strive against" or "be contradictory or inconsistent," giving us repugnant. More... strive - Seems to be from Old French estriver, "quarrel, strive." More... win - Its Germanic base gave it its first meaning, "to labor, strive, work." More... | |