Daily Content Archive
(as of Sunday, November 7, 2021)| Word of the Day | |||||||
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augury
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| Article of the Day | |
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 Cult of PersonalityOften associated with dictators, cults of personality arise when an individual uses mass media and propaganda to create an idealized public image through unquestioning flattery and praise. As democracy expanded in the 19th century, political leaders lost absolute power and sought to regain it through cults of personality, aided by the emergent fields of photography and advertising. Cults of personality are not just limited to politics, however. What athlete is said to have created one? More... | |
| This Day in History | |
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 Construction of Canadian Pacific Railway Completed (1885)The Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) was originally built between eastern Canada and British Columbia, fulfilling a promise made to British Columbia when it agreed to join the Canadian Confederation in 1871. The railway's transcontinental passenger service was instrumental in the settlement and development of Western Canada. Today, however, the CPR functions mainly as a freight railway and has US hubs, such as New York City and Chicago. What scandal disrupted the railway's construction in 1873? More... | |
| Today's Birthday | |
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 Leon Trotsky (1879)Trotsky was a Russian Communist revolutionary whose ideas form the basis of Trotskyism, a Communist ideology based on the theory of worldwide revolution. He was a key figure in the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution in Russia and organized the Red Army in the civil war that followed. After a power struggle with Joseph Stalin in the 1920s, Trotsky was exiled from the USSR. In 1940, he was assassinated in Mexico by a Spanish Communist with alleged ties to Stalin. From whom did he borrow the name "Trotsky"? More... | |
| Quotation of the Day | |
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 Why did the old Persians hold the sea holy? Why did the Greeks give it a separate deity ... ? Surely all this is not without meaning ... But that same image, we ourselves see in all rivers and oceans. It is the image of the ungraspable phantom of life; and this is the key to it all.Herman Melville (1819-1891) | |
| Idiom of the Day | |
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fountain of youth— Anything reputed or promising to restore one's youth, vitality, or health, or at least the appearance thereof. More... | |
| Today's Holiday | |
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 Revolution Day (2022)Revolution Day commemorates the October Revolution of 1917, when the Bolsheviks overthrew the Russian government by seizing power in Petrograd (formerly St. Petersburg, later named Leningrad, and renamed St. Petersburg in 1991, after the collapse of the Communist Party). The coup took place on November 7 (October 25 on the Julian calendar) and through the years was celebrated as a national holiday marking the start of the Soviet regime. All this ended in 1991 with the Soviet Union's disintegration. More... | |