Daily Content Archive

Word of the Day
nostrum Definition: (noun) Hypothetical remedy for all ills or diseases. Synonyms: cure-all, panacea, catholicon Usage: Stay healthy, for science is no closer to a nostrum than alchemy was.

Article of the Day

Technophobia Technophobia—a fear of advanced technology—emerged alongside the mechanical innovations of the Industrial Revolution and became ever more pervasive as inventions ranging from the light bulb to the atomic bomb demonstrated technology's astounding capabilities. Mild technophobia is quite common—many experience it when facing an unfamiliar computer system at a new job. More acute technophobes see technology as inherently dangerous. What well-known novel was one of the first to tackle technophobia? 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
All men are by nature equal, made all of the same earth by one Workman; and however we deceive ourselves, as dear unto God is the poor peasant as the mighty prince. Plato (427 BC-347 BC)

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...