Daily Content Archive

Word of the Day
eldritch Definition: (adjective) Suggesting the operation of supernatural influences. Synonyms: uncanny, weird, unearthly Usage: An eldritch screech from someone—or something—in the distance sent chills down my spine.

Article of the Day

The Tsavo Man-Eaters Lions do not usually hunt humans. For nine months in 1898, however, two lions terrorized construction crews who were building a bridge over the Tsavo River in Kenya, repeatedly stalking, attacking, and eating the workers. Some victims were dragged from their tents at night. The workers fled and construction was halted until Lt. Col. John H. Patterson—who was in charge of the bridge project—tracked down the lions and shot them. By Patterson's account, how many people had the lions killed? More...

This Day in History

Adams-Onís Treaty: Spain Sells Florida to the US (1819) In the early 1800s, tensions between the US and Spain were increasing over border disputes in North America. With Spanish power in the New World declining, it was widely believed that Spain would lose land to the US. The Adams-Onís Treaty settled the dispute by attempting to draw clearer borders, roughly granting Florida and Louisiana to the US while giving everything west of Louisiana to Spain. The US did not pay Spain directly for the new land. Instead, it compensated Spain in what way? More...

Today's Birthday

Robert Stephenson Smyth Baden-Powell (1857) Powell was a British army officer and founder of the Boy Scouts and Girl Guides, later the Girl Scouts. He was a hero of the South African War and author of Aids to Scouting, a military textbook. Upon learning that his book was being used to train boys in woodcraft, he wrote Scouting for Boys and established the Boy Scout movement in 1908. In 1910, with his sister and wife, he founded the Girl Guides. What disguise did Powell use while gathering information in war? More...

Quotation of the Day
If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man. Mark Twain (1835-1910)

Idiom of the Day
make matters worse — To make an already bad, unpleasant, or difficult situation even more so. (Sometimes used as an independent clause in the infinitive form: "to make matters worse.") More...

Today's Holiday

Abu Simbel Festival (2024) This festival celebrates the two days of the year on which the light of the rising sun can reach the 180-foot-deep innermost chambers of Abu Simbel, the great temple of Ramesses II, in Egypt. The temple was designed so that only on these two days in February and October does the sun shine on three of the four gods in the sanctuary: Amen-Re, Ramses, and Re-Horakhty. It is thought that there must have been ritual celebrations in ancient times on the days when the sun penetrated the sanctuary. Today, television covers the event, and people gather to see the sunrise and to meditate. More...