Daily Content Archive
(as of Friday, June 26, 2020)| Word of the Day | |||||||
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mesmerize
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| Daily Grammar Lesson | |
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Using Conjunctive AdverbsWhen we join two independent clauses with a conjunctive adverb, we can use a period and keep them as two discrete sentences. If we choose to separate the two clauses with a period, though, what must we remember to do to the conjunctive adverb? More... | |
| Article of the Day | |
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 The CrowCrows are highly intelligent birds that can easily be tamed, yet they are regarded by Western cultures as harbingers of doom because of their dark plumage, unnerving calls, and the fact that they have been known to loiter around battlefields, feed on corpses, and destroy grain crops. They are smart enough to recognize individual humans and can hold grudges against specific people. Due to their sensitivity to it, crows are a good indicator of the spread of what virus that also attacks humans? More... | |
| This Day in History | |
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 Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery" Is Published (1948)Published by the The New Yorker the same month it was written, Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery" instantly became one of the most controversial stories ever run by the esteemed magazine. Hundreds of outraged readers cancelled their subscriptions or wrote letters expressing their confusion and anger over the story's meaning. Now considered a classic, the chilling story matter-of-factly describes an annual lottery in a bucolic American town in which one person is selected for what? More... | |
| Today's Birthday | |
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 George Edward Stanhope Molyneux Herbert, 5th Earl of Carnarvon (1866)An enthusiastic amateur Egyptologist, Carnarvon was an English aristocrat who funded several excavations in Egypt. After pursuits in Thebes, he joined forces with English Egyptologist Howard Carter to search for Tutankhamun's tomb in the Valley of the Kings. In 1922, the two opened the young Pharaoh's crypt, discovering treasures unsurpassed in the history of archaeology. Carnarvon's death a year after the discovery became linked to the legendary "Mummy's Curse." What really killed him? More... | |
| Quotation of the Day | |
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 There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion.Francis Bacon (1561-1626) | |
| Idiom of the Day | |
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odds and sods— An assortment of small, miscellaneous items, especially those that are not especially important or valuable. Primarily heard in UK, Australia. More... | |
| Today's Holiday | |
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 Madagascar Independence Day (2025)This national holiday commemorates Madagascar's independence from France on this day in 1960. Republic Day is another public holiday in Madagascar, held on December 30, the day the new constitution went into effect. The country became a republic in 1975. More... | |
| Word Trivia | |
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Today's topic: recipeGerman chocolate - Refers to Baker's German Sweet Chocolate, German being an employee of Baker who developed the sweet chocolate in the recipe. More... receipt - Its first meaning was "a drug made according to a recipe" or a "recipe" for making food. More... recipe - As a verb, it was once used at the beginning of medical prescriptions and it first (in Latin) meant "take"—we are familiar with its use by physicians in the abbreviation R or Rx. More... tollhouse cookie - Named after the Toll House in Whitman, Massachusetts, the source of the recipe. More... | |