Daily Content Archive
(as of Tuesday, May 26, 2020)| Word of the Day | |||||||
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drudgery
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| Daily Grammar Lesson | |
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Defining Possessive DeterminersPossessive determiners, also known as "possessive adjectives," are a class of determiners that are used to modify nouns to denote possession. They take the place of the definite article "the" and state whom or what an item belongs to. We use a different possessive determiner to correspond with each personal pronoun. What possessive determiner corresponds to the personal pronoun "I"? More... | |
| Article of the Day | |
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 Barbara McClintockMcClintock was an American geneticist. In the 1940s and 50s, her experiments with variations in the coloration of kernels of maize revealed that genes are not stationary, but can "jump" on the chromosome. She isolated two control elements in genetic material and found not only that they moved, but also that their transposition affected the behavior of neighboring genes. In 1983, she was belatedly awarded a Nobel Prize in Physiology. Why did she stop publishing her findings in the 50s? More... | |
| This Day in History | |
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 Vauxhall Bridge Opens in London (1906)Vauxhall Bridge is an arch bridge over the River Thames in central London. Despite its public garden and location, the Vauxhall area was sparsely populated before the 19th century, and a plan for a bridge there was hatched in 1809 to help develop the area. The resulting bridge was in terrible shape by the end of the century, however, and construction on a new, richly decorated, steel-and-granite replacement began in 1898. A major transport artery today, the bridge is adorned with what statues? More... | |
| Today's Birthday | |
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 Al Jolson (1886)Jolson was one of the most popular entertainers in the US in the 1930s. The son of a rabbi, he had planned to be a cantor but instead became a singer and comedian. By the age of 15, he was touring in vaudeville and minstrel shows. His 1909 blackface performance of "Mammy" was a hit, and he performed on Broadway and the radio. In 1927, he starred in the first feature-length "talkie," The Jazz Singer. How do scholars differ in their analysis of Jolson's use of blackface in his performances? More... | |
| Quotation of the Day | |
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 If you desire to drain to the dregs the fullest cup of scorn and hatred that a fellow human being can pour out for you, let a young mother hear you call dear baby "it."Jerome K. Jerome (1859-1927) | |
| Idiom of the Day | |
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have eyes bigger than (one's) stomach— To take more food than one is actually capable of eating. More... | |
| Today's Holiday | |
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 French Open Tennis (2020)The French Open is one of the four major tournaments that make up the Grand Slam of tennis. (The others are the Australian Open, the United States Open, and Wimbledon.) The French National Championship, played at the Stade Roland Garros in Auteil, France, on red-clay courts, was instituted in 1891 but wasn't opened to players from other nations until 1925. It became an open (to both amateurs and professionals) in 1968. More... | |
| Word Trivia | |
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Today's topic: knightesquire - At its root, it means "shield bearer (in service to a knight)," from Latin scutarius. More... forget-me-nots - May have gotten their name from the last words of a knight who drowned while trying to pick these flowers by a riverside. More... heart on one's sleeve - Comes from chivalry, when a knight wore a scarf or other item from his lady tied to his sleeve. More... | |