Daily Content Archive
(as of Tuesday, December 14, 2021)| Word of the Day | |||||||
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harangue
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| Article of the Day | |
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 The KomosThe komos was a ritualistic drunken procession performed by revelers—called komasts—in ancient Greece at events like weddings and feasts. Though its precise nature can only be guessed from its depiction in vase paintings, scholars have determined that the komos is separate from two similar processions: the formal pompe and the scripted chorus, which, unlike the komos, had a leader. The komos featured music and dancing, and komasts might have carried torches and worn what? More... | |
| This Day in History | |
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 Max Planck's Quantum Theory Is Born (1900)Considered the inventor of quantum theory, Max Planck shocked the science world by showing that atoms emit or absorb energy in bundles, or quanta, not in a continuous stream as taught by Newtonian physics. This insight, along with subsequent developments by Einstein, Bohr, and others, established the revolutionary quantum theory of modern physics and earned Planck the 1918 Nobel Prize in Physics. In 1945, Planck's son was executed following a failed attempt to assassinate what political figure? More... | |
| Today's Birthday | |
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 George VI, King of Great Britain and Ireland (1895)The subject of the Academy Award-winning 2010 film The King's Speech, George VI became king of the United Kingdom following the abdication of his brother, Edward VIII. George was an important symbolic leader of the British people during World War II, supporting the wartime leadership of Winston Churchill and visiting his armies on the battlefield. He earned the respect of his people by scrupulously observing the responsibilities of a constitutional monarch and by overcoming what handicap? More... | |
| Quotation of the Day | |
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 The history of human conduct does not warrant that exalted opinion of human virtue which would make it wise in a nation to commit interests of so delicate and momentous a kind, as those which concern its intercourse with the rest of the world, to the sole disposal of a magistrate.Alexander Hamilton (1755-1804) | |
| Idiom of the Day | |
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catch the sun— To get sunburned. More... | |
| Today's Holiday | |
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.jpg) Halcyon Days (2022)The ancient Greeks called the seven days preceding and the seven days following the Winter Solstice the "Halcyon Days." Greek mythology has it that Halcyone (or Alcyone), Ceyx's wife and one of Aeolus's daughters, drowned herself when she learned her husband had drowned. The gods took pity on her and transformed them both into kingfishers. Zeus commanded the seas to be still during these days, and it was considered a period when sailors could navigate in safety. Today, the expression "halcyon days" has come to mean a period of tranquility often used as a nostalgic reference to times past. More... | |