Daily Content Archive

Word of the Day
zoophagous Definition: (adjective) Feeding on animal matter; carnivorous. Synonyms: meat-eating Usage: Zoophagous insects include predators and parasites.

Article of the Day

The Seven Summits The Seven Summits are the highest mountains of each of the world's seven continents. Richard Bass compiled this list in the 1980s and established as a mountaineering challenge the summiting of all seven. Reinhold Messner, another climber, proposed substituting one of the mountains with New Guinea's Carstensz Pyramid (4,884 m). From a mountaineering standpoint, Messner's list is considered the more challenging one. As of March 2007, how many climbers had scaled all of the peaks on both lists? More...

This Day in History

Lumière Brothers' First Film Screening for a Paying Public Audience (1895) In 1882, French inventor Louis Lumière developed a method of making photographic plates. By 1894, he and his brother August were producing 15 million plates a year. They worked on improving Edison's kinetoscope, and, in 1895, patented their combination movie camera and projector, the Cinématographe. Their 46-second film La Sortie des ouvriers de l'usine Lumière is considered the first motion picture and was one of 10 included in their first public film screening. What is its subject? More...

Today's Birthday

John von Neumann (1903) Neumann was a Hungarian-born American mathematician. He emigrated to the US in 1930 to teach at Princeton University and was among the original faculty of its Institute for Advanced Study. He solved one of David Hilbert's 23 theoretical problems, collaborated on an algebraic ring with profound applications in quantum physics, and helped develop the atomic bomb. He later made major contributions to the development of computers. What branch of applied mathematics did he help found? More...

Quotation of the Day
Our problems are man-made, therefore they may be solved by man...No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings. John F. Kennedy (1917-1963)

Idiom of the Day
long-run — (used before a noun) Involving, maturing after, or lasting for a long period of time. More...

Today's Holiday

Russian Winter Festival Moscow (2024) The Russian Winter Festival is a festival of arts and a time of holiday partying largely in Moscow, Russia, and somewhat less grandly in other cities of the former Soviet Union. In Moscow, there are circuses, performances of Russian fables for children, and other special theatrical presentations as well as traditional outdoor parties with troika (sled) rides, folk games, and dancing around fir trees. On New Year's Eve, children wait for gifts from "Grandfather Frost"—who wears a red robe and black boots and has a white beard—and his helper, Snow Girl. More...