Daily Content Archive
(as of Monday, July 17, 2023)| Word of the Day | |||||||
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overtone
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| Daily Grammar Lesson | |
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Defining Auxiliary VerbsAuxiliary verbs are verbs that add functional meaning to other "main" or "full" verbs in a clause. They are used to create different tenses or aspects, to form negatives and interrogatives, or to add emphasis to a sentence. What are auxiliary verbs also called? More... | |
| Article of the Day | |
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 QuartzQuartz, which can split light into a spectrum, is one of the most common of all rock-forming minerals and one of the most important constituents of the earth's crust. Quartz may be transparent, translucent, or opaque; it may be colorless or colored. Varieties are classified as crystalline and cryptocrystalline, whose crystal structure can be seen only under the microscope, if at all. What is quartz's rank on the Mohs scale of hardness? More... | |
| This Day in History | |
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 RMS Carpathia Torpedoed by German Submarine (1918)The RMS Carpathia was a Cunard Line transatlantic passenger steamship that first became famous for rescuing more than 700 survivors of the Titanic disaster in 1912. Six years later, during WWI, the Carpathia was travelling in a convoy when it was torpedoed off the east coast of Ireland by the German submarine U-55. Many of the passengers and crew members were rescued by the HMS Snowdrop the following day. When was the steamship's wreckage discovered? More... | |
| Today's Birthday | |
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 Erle Stanley Gardner (1889)After serving as a trial lawyer for many years, Gardner began writing detective stories for magazines in the early 1920s. He became a prolific novelist whose narratives were characterized by fast action and clever legal devices—which he based on his own courtroom tactics. His most famous character was the unconventional lawyer Perry Mason, who appeared in more than 80 novels and inspired a television series. Gardner published his stories under at least seven pseudonyms. What were some of them? More... | |
| Quotation of the Day | |
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 To know what you prefer, instead of humbly saying Amen to what the world tells you you ought to prefer, is to have kept your soul alive.Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) | |
| Idiom of the Day | |
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a bit out of it— Feeling somewhat disoriented, phased, or out of touch with the world; spaced out. More... | |
| Today's Holiday | |
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 British Open (2023)The British Open is the oldest and one of the most prestigious international golf championship tournaments in the world. It began in 1860 at the then 12-hole Prestwick course in Scotland and is now rotated among select golf courses in England and Scotland. The Open has a special cachet for golfers since Scotland is considered, if not the birthplace of golf, the place where it developed into its present form played with ball, club, and hole. The game may actually have originated in Holland, where they called it kolven, but golf in Scotland goes back before 1457. More... | |
| Word Trivia | |
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Today's topic: polessedan chair - An enclosed chair carried on poles. More... oblate, prolate - Oblate means "flattened at the poles," and the opposite is prolate; the Earth is an oblate spheroid. More... tent - Comes from a Latin word for "stretch," as early tents were made from cloth or skins stretched on poles. More... running boards - Originally extended from bow to stern on canal boats—which men walked along, propelling the boats with poles. More... | |