Daily Content Archive
(as of Friday, June 21, 2019)| Word of the Day | |||||||
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| Daily Grammar Lesson | |
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Constructing Conditional VerbsConditional verbs are constructions of verbs that are used in conditional sentences. Such verbs are typically formed when a clause in the sentence contains the word "if," and the action of the sentence depends on the condition established by this clause. What type of verb is often used to help indicate the tense and intention of the verbs in the conditional or resulting clause(s)? More... | |
| Article of the Day | |
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 Simonetta VespucciSimonetta was the Genoese wife of the Italian nobleman Marco Vespucci of Florence. Renowned as the greatest beauty of her age, she was the subject of countless portraits, including many by the Italian master Sandro Botticelli. Some claim that the goddess depicted in Botticelli's masterpiece, Birth of Venus, was modeled after Simonetta, even though she died at the age of 22—several years before it was completed. What fact about Botticelli's burial place lends credence to the theory? More... | |
| This Day in History | |
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 Japanese Submarine Attacks US Mainland (1942)With the exception of the attack on Pearl Harbor, the US was able to largely avoid fighting WWII on home soil, mainly because of its relative geographical isolation. However, Japan attacked the West Coast of the US several times. In 1942, a Japanese submarine fired at Fort Stevens in Oregon in the first and only attack on a mainland US military installation during the war. The shells damaged phone cables and a baseball backstop, but the fort's gunners were ordered not to return fire. Why? More... | |
| Today's Birthday | |
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 Mary Therese McCarthy (1912)McCarthy began her storied writing career as a drama critic for the Partisan Review in the 1930s, gaining a reputation for wit, intellect, and acerbity—qualities that are evident in her later works of satirical fiction as well as in her personal life. She engaged other authors in public feuds and repeatedly took contentious literary and political stands. Author Lillian Hellman filed a multimillion-dollar libel suit against McCarthy after she made what comment about Hellman's writing? More... | |
| Quotation of the Day | |
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 It is unsafe to take your reader for more of a fool than he is.W. Somerset Maugham (1874-1965) | |
| Idiom of the Day | |
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not have (one's) heart in (something)— To not be emotionally invested or enthusiastic about something; to have no drive or will to do something. More... | |
| Today's Holiday | |
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 Midnight Sun Festival (2023)The Midnight Sun Festival is a celebration of the Summer Solstice in Nome, Alaska, where the sun shines for better than 22 hours a day in the peak of summer. The longest day of the year is feted with a street dance, blanket toss, barbecue, Monte Carlo night (gambling), Eskimo dances, and a parade. A river raft race has been held at midnight on June 21 since the 1960s. Various homemade rafts paddle down a one- to two-mile course on the Nome River, and the winning team claims a fur-lined honey bucket, which is passed on from year to year. More... | |
| Word Trivia | |
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Today's topic: huskbeer nut - A peanut served with its husk but not its shell. More... brown sugar, brown rice - Brown sugar is unrefined or partially refined; brown rice is unpolished with only the husk removed. More... husk - A shortening of Dutch huisken, "little house." More... paddy - As in "field," it is from a Malay word meaning "rice in the straw or husk" (making rice paddy redundant). More... | |