Daily Content Archive
(as of Wednesday, July 10, 2019)| Word of the Day | |||||||
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squander
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| Daily Grammar Lesson | |
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Using Reporting VerbsBoth direct and indirect speech use what are known as "reporting verbs," the most common of which are "say" and "tell." When we use "tell," we need to use another person's name or a personal pronoun as an indirect object. What are other reporting verbs? More... | |
| Article of the Day | |
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 Pliny's Natural HistoryPliny the Elder was a Roman scholar famous for his Historia Naturalis—Natural History—an encyclopedia published in 77 CE. His one surviving work, it is divided into 37 books that survey all the known sciences of the day, notably geography, anthropology, zoology, mineralogy, and botany. Although the work was the European authority on scientific matters up to the Middle Ages, it is of uneven accuracy. Pliny was in the process of revising the work when he died observing what disaster? More... | |
| This Day in History | |
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 Rubens's Massacre of the Innocents Sells for £49.5 million (2002)Misattributed to an assistant of Baroque painter Peter Paul Rubens until 2002, when an expert from Sotheby's auction house identified it as the work of the master himself, Massacre of the Innocents is an early 17th-century painting depicting Herod's slaughter of the infants of Bethlehem. One of two paintings Rubens made of the Biblical scene, it fetched £49.5 million ($76 million) at auction and is one of the priciest paintings ever sold. Its style is reminiscent of which Italian painter? More... | |
| Today's Birthday | |
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 Camille Pissarro (1830)Known as the "Father of Impressionism," Pissarro was the only Impressionist painter who participated in all eight of the group's exhibitions. He is notable not only for his paintings of rural and urban French life but in his role as a mentor to postimpressionists Paul Cézanne and Paul Gauguin. He gained popularity in the 1890s with his interpretation of nature, including many landscapes drawn from his surroundings in the French countryside. Why were many of his paintings destroyed in 1871? More... | |
| Quotation of the Day | |
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 Love is invisible, and comes in and goes out as he likes, without anyone calling him to account for what he does.Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1616) | |
| Idiom of the Day | |
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hang paper— To write a dishonored or bad check. More... | |
| Today's Holiday | |
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 Laguna Beach Festival of Arts (2023)This festival features a display of art works in Laguna Beach, California, along with breathtaking tableaux vivants—living pictures that recreate master art works. Since the 1940s, artists have created the tableaux to reproduce paintings by such varied masters as Leonardo da Vinci, Henri Matisse, and Winslow Homer. They also transform pieces of jewelry, sculptures, antique artifacts, and even scenes from postage stamps into life-sized works of art. The tableaux, presented for 90 minutes each evening, are created by some 300 models. More... | |
| Word Trivia | |
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Today's topic: railwayMain Line - The principal line of a railway (1841), it also has the meaning "affluent area of residence" (1930s), originally that of Philadelphia, from the "main line" of the Pennsylvania Railroad, which added local stops to a string of backwater towns west of the city in late 19th century that helped turn them into fashionable suburbs. More... one-track mind - Is a reference to the railway. More... railway - The word was first recorded in 1776, but the first actual railway opened nearly 50 years later, in 1825. More... sidetrack - First used for a railway siding or a minor track or path. More... | |