Daily Content Archive
(as of Friday, May 14, 2021)| Word of the Day | |||||||
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impale
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| Daily Grammar Lesson | |
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Reflexive Pronouns as Direct Objects in the Middle VoiceMany middle-voice verbs are transitive verbs and therefore require a direct object in the form of a reflexive pronoun. Without a reflexive pronoun, what happens to the receiver of the action? More... | |
| Article of the Day | |
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 RefractionWhen an object, such as a pencil, is partly immersed in water and viewed from above, it appears to bend underwater. This illusion is caused by refraction, the change in direction of a wave as it leaves one medium and enters another. Waves travel with greater velocity in some media than in others, and when a wave enters a new medium at a certain angle, the change in speed occurs sooner on one side of the wave than on the other. What other optical phenomena are caused by refraction? More... | |
| This Day in History | |
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 Skylab Is Launched (1973)Launched into orbit in 1973, Skylab was the first US space station. It carried a laboratory for studying the human body's adaptation to weightlessness and a powerful solar telescope. Three successive astronaut crews conducted research aboard Skylab for a total of 171 days in 1973–74. Though Skylab was intended to be reused, increased solar activity caused its orbit to degrade faster than expected. In 1979, the 75-tonne station reentered Earth's atmosphere and broke up. Where did the debris land? More... | |
| Today's Birthday | |
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 Charles Peace (1832)Peace was a notorious English burglar and murderer whose life spawned many romanticized works of fiction, including dozens of novels and films and even a comic strip. After stints in prison and a criminal career spanning decades, Peace was finally captured and imprisoned on charges of burglary and the attempted murder of a police officer. He was then tried for a past murder and was sentenced to death. Peace is mentioned by name in what Sherlock Holmes short story? More... | |
| Quotation of the Day | |
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 Cruelty was the devil's own trade-mark, and if we saw any one who took pleasure in cruelty we might know who he belonged to ... On the other hand, where we saw people who loved their neighbors, and were kind to man and beast, we might know that was God's mark.Anna Sewell (1820-1878) | |
| Idiom of the Day | |
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a wild goose never laid a tame egg— Something will not be spontaneously different from that which came before. The phrase is used to describe things that are determined by nature and the environment, or else inherited from the generation before. More... | |
| Today's Holiday | |
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 Dhungri Fair (2023)This is a festival celebrated by Hindu women from the hills near Manali, at the north end of the Kullu Valley in the Himachal Pradesh State of India. A small wooden temple known as the Hidimba (or Dhungri) Temple stands among cedar trees near Manali. The women gather here to honor the goddess Hidimba, who fell in love with Bhima and became his wife in the famous Hindu epic Mahabharata, with a traditional dance. More... | |
| Word Trivia | |
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Today's topic: slantwine cradle - A basket (etc.) used to hold wine at a slant. More... slant - A variant of slent, an older word. More... slash - The slash is also called a virgule, diagonal, separatrix, slant, and solidus. More... tilt - Originally meant "fall over," from Germanic taltaz, "unsteady," long before it meant "slant." More... | |