Daily Content Archive
(as of Monday, November 30, 2020)| Word of the Day | |||||||
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empennage
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| Article of the Day | |
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 Human BrandingHistorically, human branding—the practice of burning marks or patterns into the skin of a living person—was used to mark slaves and criminals. The ancient Romans branded runaway slaves with the letters FUG, for fugitivus. Until the 1800s, hot irons were used to brand British criminals with letters specific to their crimes. Today, human branding is generally voluntary and is used as body decoration or as an act of initiation to gangs. What religious sect practices human branding? More... | |
| This Day in History | |
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 The Battle of Narva (1700)Sweden's power and influence in the Baltic region was growing when the young and inexperienced Charles XII came to the throne in 1697. Seeing their chance to end Swedish domination of the area, Charles's neighbors—Peter I of Russia, Frederick IV of Denmark, and Augustus II of Poland—formed an alliance and attacked. At Narva, the first major battle of the Great Northern War, Charles's army soundly defeated the superior Russian forces. A few years later, Peter returned to Narva. What happened? More... | |
| Today's Birthday | |
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 Jonathan Swift (1667)Known as one of the greatest satirists in the English language, Swift was an ordained Anglican priest who devoted himself to exposing England's unfair treatment of his native Ireland. In his ironic 1729 tract "A Modest Proposal," he suggested that the Irish escape poverty by selling their children to by eaten by the English. His classic Gulliver's Travels is a ruthless satire of human follies. Swift once mocked a publisher of astrological predictions by making what prediction of his own? More... | |
| Quotation of the Day | |
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 Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong.Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) | |
| Today's Holiday | |
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 Bonn Om Tuk (Festival of the Reversing Current) (2020)The Festival of the Reversing Current is a festival and national holiday to celebrate a natural phenomenon in Cambodia. Tonlé Sap, a lake, is connected to the Mekong River by the Tonle Sap River, which normally flows south from the lake. But during the rainy season, the flood-swollen Mekong backs up and flows backward through the Tonle Sap River into the lake. The normal southward flow returns when the dry season starts. The festival, held at the time when the Tonle Sap returns to its normal direction, is a time of fireworks, merrymaking, and races of pirogues, or long canoes, at Phnom Penh. More... | |