Daily Content Archive
(as of Saturday, March 25, 2023)| Word of the Day | |||||||
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demigod
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| Daily Grammar Lesson | |
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Using GerundsBecause they act like nouns, gerunds can be used as the subject of a sentence, the subject complement of the linking verb "be," the object of a preposition, or the object of a verb. They can also be used to form what? More... | |
| Article of the Day | |
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 GulagThe Gulag was a system of forced-labor prison camps in the USSR, from the Russian acronym for the Main Directorate of Corrective Labor Camps, a department of the Soviet secret police. It was first established under Lenin during the early Bolshevik years and ultimately included 476 camp complexes. The system reached its peak after 1928 under Stalin, who used it to maintain the Soviet state by keeping its populace in a state of terror. Whose book publicized the gulag system to the Western world? More... | |
| This Day in History | |
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 John Lennon and Yoko Ono Hold Their First Bed-In for Peace (1969)Five days after John Lennon of the Beatles married the Japanese avant-garde artist Yoko Ono, the couple held the first of two week-long Bed-Ins for Peace as a non-violent way of protesting war and promoting peace. For the first Bed-In, the couple invited members of the press into their Amsterdam hotel room and then sat in bed and talked about peace. Months later, they held their second Bed-In in Montreal. What hit song did they record during the second Bed-In? More... | |
| Today's Birthday | |
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 Béla Bartók (1881)Bartók was a Hungarian composer, virtuoso pianist, and collector of folk music. In 1904, having discovered that the folk-music repertory generally accepted as Hungarian was in fact largely urban Roma—Gypsy—music, he set about researching Hungarian folk music. He worked folk themes and rhythms into his own music, achieving a style that was at once nationalistic and deeply personal. What surprising discoveries did he make in his study of folk music? More... | |
| Quotation of the Day | |
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 Convictions are more dangerous foes of truth than lies.Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) | |
| Idiom of the Day | |
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win (something) in a walk— To win (something) easily, handily, or without much or any effort. More... | |
| Today's Holiday | |
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 Annunciation of the Lord (2024)This day celebrates the appearance of the Archangel Gabriel to the Virgin Mary announcing that she was to become the mother of Jesus. In England, the Feast of the Annunciation is commonly called Lady Day. Greek Orthodox Christians refer to this day as the Annunciation of the Theotokos. In Sweden it was called Varfrudagen, "Our Lady's Day." Common pronunciation turned it into Vaffeldagen, or "Waffle Day." This is the source of heart-shaped waffle irons: the waffles commemorate the heart of the Virgin Mary. More... | |
| Word Trivia | |
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Today's topic: strivecompete - Comes from Latin competere, "come together," but in later Latin, it developed the sense "strive together," which was the basis for the English term. More... repugn, repugnant - Repugn means "to strive against" or "be contradictory or inconsistent," giving us repugnant. More... strive - Seems to be from Old French estriver, "quarrel, strive." More... win - Its Germanic base gave it its first meaning, "to labor, strive, work." More... | |