Daily Content Archive
(as of Sunday, December 5, 2021)| Word of the Day | |||||||
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akin
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| Daily Grammar Lesson | |
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Adding Verb Phrases to a SentenceVerb phrases add additional information to a sentence. Because verb phrases can be made up of more than one verb, as well as the information relating to those verbs, we can add quite a bit of information into a single sentence. This additional information is used to answer what questions? More... | |
| Article of the Day | |
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 ShirazShiraz is a southern Iranian city near the extensive ruins of ancient Persepolis—the capital of Persia established by Darius I and plundered by Alexander the Great in 330 BCE. In the 18th century, Karim Khan briefly made Shiraz the capital of Persia, adorning it with fine buildings. Shiraz has long been regarded as an economic and cultural center of Iran, famous for its eponymous wine, gardens, carpets, shrines, and mosques, as well as its poets and philosophers. Which poets are buried here? More... | |
| This Day in History | |
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 Christopher Columbus Becomes the First European on Hispaniola (1492)Soon after landing on the island now known as Hispaniola—home to the Dominican Republic and Haiti—Columbus returned to Spain with news of the New World, leaving behind a group of colonists. On his second expedition, he discovered that the colony had been destroyed, and he established another one. The new colony soon fell into a state of disorder, which he tried to quell with strict discipline. The colonists appear to have disliked Columbus's tyrannical leadership. What did they do about it? More... | |
| Today's Birthday | |
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 Walter Elias "Walt" Disney (1901)Disney began his career as a cartoonist in 1920. By the time he died in 1966, he had built an entertainment empire. His enormously successful cartoons and films—both animated and live-action—employed groundbreaking technology and introduced now-famous characters such as Mickey Mouse. A skilled businessman as well as an innovator, Disney oversaw his company's expansion into theme parks and mass merchandising. According to legend, what were the mysterious last two words Disney wrote? More... | |
| Quotation of the Day | |
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 All visible objects ... are but as pasteboard masks.Herman Melville (1819-1891) | |
| Idiom of the Day | |
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there and back— Taking the distances to the end point and back to the beginning together as a single sum. More... | |
| Today's Holiday | |
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 International Volunteer Day for Economic and Social Development (2025)In 1985, the United Nations established December 5 as International Volunteer Day for Economic and Social Development. The Assembly hoped that in so doing, it would draw favorable attention to the contribution made by volunteers, and thus inspire more people to serve the world community as volunteers. More... | |
| Word Trivia | |
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Today's topic: slopingpitched - Describing a "steeply downward sloping" roof built at an angle. More... fastigiate - Means "sloping up to a point." More... slalom - From Norwegian sla, "sloping," and lam, "track." More... squint - Short for the obsolete asquint, which may have come from Dutch schuin, "sideways, sloping." More... | |