Daily Content Archive
(as of Friday, June 21, 2019)| Word of the Day | |||||||
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| Daily Grammar Lesson | |
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Parts of SpeechThe parts of speech are the primary categories of words according to their function in a sentence. English has seven main parts of speech. Can you name all seven? More... | |
| Article of the Day | |
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 Simonetta VespucciSimonetta was the Genoese wife of the Italian nobleman Marco Vespucci of Florence. Renowned as the greatest beauty of her age, she was the subject of countless portraits, including many by the Italian master Sandro Botticelli. Some claim that the goddess depicted in Botticelli's masterpiece, Birth of Venus, was modeled after Simonetta, even though she died at the age of 22—several years before it was completed. What fact about Botticelli's burial place lends credence to the theory? More... | |
| This Day in History | |
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 Japanese Submarine Attacks US Mainland (1942)With the exception of the attack on Pearl Harbor, the US was able to largely avoid fighting WWII on home soil, mainly because of its relative geographical isolation. However, Japan attacked the West Coast of the US several times. In 1942, a Japanese submarine fired at Fort Stevens in Oregon in the first and only attack on a mainland US military installation during the war. The shells damaged phone cables and a baseball backstop, but the fort's gunners were ordered not to return fire. Why? More... | |
| Today's Birthday | |
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 Mary Therese McCarthy (1912)McCarthy began her storied writing career as a drama critic for the Partisan Review in the 1930s, gaining a reputation for wit, intellect, and acerbity—qualities that are evident in her later works of satirical fiction as well as in her personal life. She engaged other authors in public feuds and repeatedly took contentious literary and political stands. Author Lillian Hellman filed a multimillion-dollar libel suit against McCarthy after she made what comment about Hellman's writing? More... | |
| Quotation of the Day | |
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 It is unsafe to take your reader for more of a fool than he is.W. Somerset Maugham (1874-1965) | |
| Idiom of the Day | |
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high profile— A presence or stance that is deliberately conspicuous and prominent socially. More... | |
| Today's Holiday | |
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 U.S. Open Championship (Golf) (2020)The U.S. Open is the oldest golf tournament in North America, first held in 1895. More than 6,000 professional and amateur golfers vie for only 156 available places. Unlike the Masters, which is an invitational tournament, the U.S. Open is for anyone good enough to survive the qualifying rounds. Rather than being played on the same course each year, its location changes, traditionally played on the nation's best courses. The tournament itself takes four days. There is a qualifying round followed by three days of 18 holes each, for a total of 72 holes. More... | |
| Word Trivia | |
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Today's topic: stretchingaforcing - The term for stretching the amount of a dish to accommodate more people. More... extend, extent - Are based on Latin pandere, "stretch." More... oscitancy, pandiculation - Oscitancy is the act of yawning; pandiculation is an all-over stretching and yawning, as upon waking, from Latin pandere. More... racking one's brain - Figuratively, it means stretching, and is derived from the Tower of London's torture method. More... | |