Daily Content Archive

Word of the Day
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Article of the Day

Solar Sails The electromagnetic radiation carried by solar wind exerts pressure on surfaces that absorb or reflect it. Though small, this force can be harnessed and used as a form of space propulsion requiring no fuel. Solar sails are lightweight, highly reflective devices that harness this force and, when attached to spacecrafts, may be used to modify their orbits, perform fine trajectory corrections, and even drive interplanetary flights. Has a working solar sail ever been successfully tested? More...

This Day in History

9-Month-Old Mary Stuart Is Crowned "Queen of Scots" (1543) When King James V of Scotland died in 1542, his two sons had already died in infancy and his only surviving child—a daughter—was just a week old. The infant Mary Queen of Scots was crowned nine months later in an elaborate coronation at Stirling Castle, where she would spend her early years. Laden with regal robes, the tiny sovereign cried throughout the entire ceremony. Soon thereafter, King Henry VIII of England attacked Scotland in an attempt to force what to happen to Mary? More...

Today's Birthday

Count Leo Tolstoy (1828) Tolstoy was a Russian novelist and philosopher. Considered one of the world's greatest writers, he is perhaps most famous for his masterpieces, War and Peace, a vast prose epic of the Napoleonic invasion of 1812, and Anna Karenina, about the tragedy of a woman's faith in romantic love. Tolstoy was an anarchist and disapproved of all organizations based on the premise of force, including the government and the church. How many characters are there in War and Peace? More...

Quotation of the Day
The rain fell alike upon the just and upon the unjust, and for nothing was there a why and a wherefore. W. Somerset Maugham (1874-1965)

Idiom of the Day
scare (someone) silly — To shock or frighten someone very suddenly and/or severely. Hyperbolically alludes to frightening someone so severely as to cause them to lose their mind. More...

Today's Holiday

Pilgrimage to the Shrine of Father Laval (2025) This annual pilgrimage is made by thousands of people of all faiths to the shrine of Roman Catholic priest Père Jacques Désiré Laval in Port Louis, Mauritius. Father Laval came to Mauritius in 1841 and devoted himself to the spiritual improvement of the emancipated slaves until his death in 1864. The pilgrimage is held on the day of his death. It originated on the day Laval was buried, when more than 30,000 weeping people followed his bier as he was taken for burial opposite the Ste. Croix Church. A monument to him is there today, and many masses are celebrated at the shrine on the memorial day. More...