Daily Content Archive
(as of Tuesday, December 17, 2019)| Word of the Day | |||||||
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quittance
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| Article of the Day | |
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 Capability BrownBrown was an English landscape gardener known for designing gardens that broke with the French formal tradition. Brown instead favored a distinctively English style of grandly picturesque, natural-looking, and asymmetrically structured landscapes replete with groves of trees, expansive lawns, meandering streams, and sylvan lakes. In 1749, he became a consulting gardener and earned his nickname by often telling clients that their properties had "capabilities." What was his real first name? More... | |
| This Day in History | |
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 The Simpsons Debuts (1989)One of the most popular animated TV shows in US history, The Simpsons has earned its spot in pop culture history through its parodies of the "Middle American" lifestyle. The show, created by Matt Groening, is a spin-off of a series of animated shorts originally aired on The Tracey Ullman Show and is currently both the longest-running American sitcom and the longest-running American animated program. What are some of the characters' famous catchphrases? More... | |
| Today's Birthday | |
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 Gabrielle-Émilie Le Tonnelier de Breteuil, Marquise du Châtelet (1706)The wife of a French marquis, du Châtelet defied convention in both her personal and professional life. She was a mathematician and physicist and wrote a number of scientific treatises as well as a translation of Isaac Newton's Principia Mathematica. She had several extramarital affairs—the most enduring of which was with philosopher and writer Voltaire, who once described her as "a great man whose only fault was being a woman." How did she once think her way out of a gambling debt? More... | |
| Quotation of the Day | |
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 The idea had got into his mind that he would some time die unexpectedly and always when he got into bed he thought of that...The effect in fact was quite a special thing and not easily explained. It made him more alive, there in bed, than at any other time.Sherwood Anderson (1876-1941) | |
| Idiom of the Day | |
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drop (one) a line— To contact someone, usually with a letter, note, or phone call. More... | |
| Today's Holiday | |
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 Wright Brothers Day (2022)It was on the morning of December 17, 1903, that Wilbur and Orville Wright became the first men to fly and control a powered heavier-than-air machine. Events on December 17 traditionally include a "flyover" by military aircraft and a special ceremony held at the Wright Brothers National Memorial, a 425-acre area that features a 60-foot granite pylon on top of Kill Devil Hill, where the Wright Brothers' camp was located. The flyover takes place at precisely 10:35 AM, the time of the original flight in 1903. More... | |