Daily Content Archive

Word of the Day
ultramarine Definition: (noun) A blue pigment made from powdered lapis lazuli; a vivid or strong blue to purplish blue. Synonyms: indigo, French blue Usage: She found a piece of fabric dyed ultramarine, which would make a perfect sash for the light blue dress she was making.

Article of the Day

Andrea Bocelli Bocelli is an Italian tenor and multi-instrumentalist. Blind since the age of 12 and favoring opera over other, more popular styles of music, Bocelli overcame the odds and became an international superstar. His chart-topping success is, in part, due to his blending of operatic arias with pop music. Though this has helped him sell tens of millions of records, it has also earned him criticism from opera purists. What did Bocelli do for a living before becoming a "popera" star? More...

This Day in History

Jonathan Pollard Pleads Guilty to Espionage Charges (1986) After leaving graduate school in 1979, Pollard immediately began applying for intelligence positions, and landed one at the US Naval Investigative Service (NIS). In 1985, after he had attained a high level of clearance, coworkers noticed that he was accessing a huge number of documents for seemingly no reason. He was arrested and, the following year, pled guilty to selling secrets to Israel. He was sentenced to life in prison. What early clues nearly derailed his career before it started? More...

Today's Birthday

François Quesnay (1694) While serving as consulting physician to Louis XV at Versailles, Quesnay developed an interest in economics. In his 1758 Tableau économique, he described the relationship between the different economic classes of society and the flow of payments among them, and he developed the concept of economic balance used by many later economic analysts. An advocate of laissez-faire economics, he believed that all wealth originated with the land. What school of economics is he credited with founding? More...

Quotation of the Day
We should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once. And we should call every truth false which was not accompanied by at least one laugh. Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)

Idiom of the Day
a modest proposal — An extreme, unorthodox, and often provocative or distasteful remedy to a complex problem, generally suggested humorously or satirically. (An allusion to Jonathan Swift's 1729 essay A Modest Proposal, in which he suggests that the poor of Ireland could alleviate their woes by selling their children as food.) More...

Today's Holiday

Tiananmen Square Anniversary (2024) Each year thousands of people in Hong Kong, China, gather on June 4 to commemorate the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre with a candlelight vigil. On that day in 1989, Chinese government tanks rolled into Beijing's Tiananman Square, killing hundreds of demonstrators calling for democratic reforms in China, and injuring 10,000 more. Since 1997, the Chinese government has discouraged the Hong Kong commemorations and pressured foreign news correspondents not to cover the yearly event. In the year 2002 about 45,000 people attended the vigil. More...