Daily Content Archive
(as of Monday, April 30, 2018)| Word of the Day | |||||||
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| Daily Grammar Lesson | |
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AdverbsAn adverb refers to any element in a sentence used to modify a verb, adjective, another adverb, or even an entire clause. What is an adverbial? More... | |
| Article of the Day | |
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 The Peacock ThroneCreated in the 17th century for Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan—who also commissioned the Taj Mahal—the original Peacock Throne was decorated with representations of two peacocks with their tails fanned out and was said to be inlaid with rubies, emeralds, sapphires, pearls, and diamonds. It was carried off to Persia in 1739 by Nader Shah after his invasion of the Mughal Empire but was likely destroyed after his assassination in 1747. According to some sources, how much was the throne worth? More... | |
| This Day in History | |
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 Casey Jones Dies on the Cannonball Express (1900)Jones was an American locomotive engineer whose main claim to fame, until his fateful run on the Cannonball Express, was his punctuality. On April 30, 1900, he was driving the Cannonball Express south on a dangerous, accident-prone run when he suddenly saw a stalled freight train ahead. Instead of jumping to safety, he stayed to slow his train, saving his coworkers and passengers but losing his own life in the process. Who wrote the ballad that immortalized him as a folk hero? More... | |
| Today's Birthday | |
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 Kaspar Hauser (1812)In 1828, a teenage boy appeared in Nuremberg, Germany, carrying a letter that stated he had been placed in the care of the anonymous author as an infant. This caretaker claimed to have taught the boy reading, writing, and religion but never let him leave the house. The boy barely spoke but confirmed that he had been kept in a dark prison hole. In the following years, he sustained several mysterious injuries, and he was fatally stabbed in 1833. Who is thought to have been behind his death? More... | |
| Quotation of the Day | |
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 Shall a man go and hang himself because he belongs to the race of pygmies, and not be the biggest pygmy that he can? Let every one mind his own business, and endeavor to be what he was made.Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) | |
| Idiom of the Day | |
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be in tall cotton— To be in a time or period of great success or wellbeing; to be doing very well. More... | |
| Today's Holiday | |
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 Stratford Festival (2020)What started in Stratford, Ontario, in 1953 as a six-week Shakespearean drama festival under the artistic leadership of Alec Guinness and Irene Worth has since expanded into a 26-week event drawing an audience of half a million people. All of Shakespeare's plays have been performed here over the years, as well as works by Sophocles (c. 496-406 BCE), Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906), Jean-Baptiste Molière (1622-1673), Anton Chekhov (1860-1904), Richard Sheridan (1751-1816), Samuel Beckett (1906-1989), and a number of Canadian playwrights. More... | |
| Word Trivia | |
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Today's topic: mushroommushroom - Before it was a mushroom, it was called either toadstool or funge, from Latin fungus; small mushrooms are called "buttons," medium-sized ones are "cups," and the largest are "flat" or "open" mushrooms. More... fly agaric - A mushroom with a narcotic juice that, in sufficient quantities, is poisonous. More... pileated - Etymologically means "capped," like a mushroom, but now refers to a bird with a crest on the top of the head from the bill to the nape. More... shiitake - Japanese for "evergreen beech, chinquapin" (shii) and "mushroom" (take). More... | |