Daily Content Archive
(as of Friday, December 27, 2019)| Word of the Day | |||||||
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factious
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| Article of the Day | |
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 Memento MoriIn an iconic scene from Shakespeare's play Hamlet, the titular prince contemplates the skull of the former court jester Yorick, juxtaposing his jocular existence and his death. The skull is an example of a memento mori—an object intended to remind people of the inevitability of death. Derived from a Latin phrase meaning "be mindful of dying," the term has a tradition in art that dates back to antiquity. What famous paintings feature a memento mori? More... | |
| This Day in History | |
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 Radio City Music Hall Opens in New York City (1932)Developed by John D. Rockefeller, Jr., the Radio Corporation of America, and the creator of the Roxy Theatre, New York's landmark Radio City Music Hall opened with a lavish variety show that was not well received. Instead, the world's largest indoor theater began showing movies with accompanying stage spectacles. Recently, it has focused on concerts and live events such as the Grammy Awards. Its annual Christmas show remains a popular tourist attraction. What was the first film shown there? More... | |
| Today's Birthday | |
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 Johannes Kepler (1571)Described by famed astronomer Carl Sagan as "the first astrophysicist and the last scientific astrologer," Johannes Kepler was a German astronomer, mathematician, and astrologer. A key figure in the scientific revolution, Kepler derived three famous laws of planetary motion, which, among other things, established that the planets travel around the Sun in elliptical rather than circular orbits. When Kepler was six, his mother, who was later tried for witchcraft, took him to see what phenomenon? More... | |
| Quotation of the Day | |
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 All meanings, we know, depend on the key of interpretation.George Eliot (1819-1880) | |
| Idiom of the Day | |
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fox's sleep— A state of apparent sleep (or feigned indifference) in which someone is actually aware of everything going on around him or her. Alludes to the idea that foxes sleep with one eye open and thus are always at the ready. More... | |
| Today's Holiday | |
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_03.jpg) St. John the Evangelist's Day (2022)John the Evangelist was thought to be not only the youngest of the Apostles but the longest-lived, dying peacefully of natural causes at an advanced age. Although he escaped actual martyrdom, St. John endured considerable persecution and suffering for his beliefs. He is said to have drunk poison to prove his faith, been cast into a cauldron of boiling oil, and at one point banished to the Greek island of Patmos. He remained miraculously unharmed throughout these trials and returned to Ephesus, where it is believed he wrote the Gospel according to John. More... | |