Daily Content Archive
(as of Thursday, December 27, 2018)| Word of the Day | |||||||
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semiannual
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| Article of the Day | |
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 The Battle of the TrebbiaOne of the titanic struggles of history, the Second Punic, or Hannibalic, War, lasted from 218 to 201 BCE. Fought between the Carthaginian forces of Hannibal and the Roman Republic, the war's first major clash was the Battle of the Trebbia, named for the Trebbia River where it took place. Shortly after making his now-famous crossing of the Alps with elephants and a full baggage train, Hannibal descended into Italy and stunned the Roman forces by defeating them at Trebbia. Who won the war? More... | |
| This Day in History | |
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 Radio City Music Hall Opens in New York City (1932)Developed by John D. Rockefeller, Jr., the Radio Corporation of America, and the creator of the Roxy Theatre, New York's landmark Radio City Music Hall opened with a lavish variety show that was not well received. Instead, the world's largest indoor theater began showing movies with accompanying stage spectacles. Recently, it has focused on concerts and live events such as the Grammy Awards. Its annual Christmas show remains a popular tourist attraction. What was the first film shown there? More... | |
| Today's Birthday | |
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 Johannes Kepler (1571)Described by famed astronomer Carl Sagan as "the first astrophysicist and the last scientific astrologer," Johannes Kepler was a German astronomer, mathematician, and astrologer. A key figure in the scientific revolution, Kepler derived three famous laws of planetary motion, which, among other things, established that the planets travel around the Sun in elliptical rather than circular orbits. When Kepler was six, his mother, who was later tried for witchcraft, took him to see what phenomenon? More... | |
| Quotation of the Day | |
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 Animals are such agreeable friends - they ask no questions, they pass no criticisms.George Eliot (1819-1880) | |
| Idiom of the Day | |
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fox's sleep— A state of apparent sleep (or feigned indifference) in which someone is actually aware of everything going on around him or her. Alludes to the idea that foxes sleep with one eye open and thus are always at the ready. More... | |
| Today's Holiday | |
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_03.jpg) St. John the Evangelist's Day (2022)John the Evangelist was thought to be not only the youngest of the Apostles but the longest-lived, dying peacefully of natural causes at an advanced age. Although he escaped actual martyrdom, St. John endured considerable persecution and suffering for his beliefs. He is said to have drunk poison to prove his faith, been cast into a cauldron of boiling oil, and at one point banished to the Greek island of Patmos. He remained miraculously unharmed throughout these trials and returned to Ephesus, where it is believed he wrote the Gospel according to John. More... | |