Daily Content Archive
(as of Tuesday, October 19, 2021)Word of the Day | |||||||
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jejune
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Article of the Day | |
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Mahabodhi TempleSiddhartha Gautama, the man who would come to be revered as Buddha, was a prince who lived a sheltered life of luxury until he left his palace and witnessed real-world suffering. Renouncing his wealth, he became a wandering ascetic and is said to have gained enlightenment while meditating under a bodhi tree. A few hundred years later, around 250 BCE, Mahabodhi Temple, or "Great Awakening Temple," was built on the site. Who initiated the restoration of the Bodh Gaya, India, temple in the 1880s? More... |
This Day in History | |
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US Government Prohibits All Exports to Cuba (1960)After Cuba gained independence from Spain in 1898, US influence over the island grew. The two countries traded heavily until Fidel Castro rose to power in a bloody coup, and Cuba expropriated many American-owned land holdings. The US then enforced a prohibition of all exports to Cuba in 1960. Two years later, the US blockaded the island in order to compel the Soviet Union to dismantle its nuclear missile base. Although the word "embargo" exists in Spanish, what is the US embargo called in Cuba? More... |
Today's Birthday | |
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Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar (1910)For his contributions to the knowledge of the evolution of stars, Indian-American astrophysicist Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar shared the 1983 Nobel Prize in Physics. His work advanced the understanding of white dwarfs, supernovas, neutron stars, and black holes. He determined the maximum mass of a stable white dwarf—about 1.44 solar masses, the Chandrasekhar limit—beyond which a star will ultimately collapse and become a neutron star or black hole. Who else in his family was a Nobel laureate? More... |
Quotation of the Day | |
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I came into this world, not chiefly to make this a good place to live in, but to live in it, be it good or bad. Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) |
Idiom of the Day | |
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curdle (one's) blood— To terrify someone. More... |
Today's Holiday | |
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Feast of the Martyrs of North America (2022)The Feast of the North American Martyrs commemorates the death of eight priests who were killed by the Iroquois, enemies of the Huron Indians, with whom the priests had been working for 34 years. The eight who are remembered on this day are St. Rene Goupil (1608-1642), St. Isaac Jogues (1607-1646), St. John Lalonde (d. 1646), and their companions, French Jesuits who died in 1649. They were canonized together in 1930, and a shrine built for them at Auriesville, New York, holds a novena each year over nine days, including October 19. More... |