Daily Content Archive
(as of Saturday, May 14, 2022)| Word of the Day | |||||||
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grovel
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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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 The BreakersBuilt to serve as the summer home of American socialite and businessman Cornelius Vanderbilt II, the Breakers is a 70-room mansion in Newport, Rhode Island. The home was constructed in the 1890s at a cost of more than $12 million and is deemed the archetype of the Gilded Age, during which socially ambitious Americans sought to imitate the European aristocracy. Today, it is Rhode Island's most visited attraction. Why did Vanderbilt insist that wood not be used in the Breakers' construction? 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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 Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science.Charles Darwin (1809-1882) | |
| 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... | |