Daily Content Archive
(as of Wednesday, February 4, 2015)| Word of the Day | |||||||
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captious
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| Daily Grammar Lesson | |
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Auxiliary VerbsAuxiliary verbs (also called helping verbs) are verbs that add functional meaning to other "main" or "full" verbs in a clause. What are the three primary auxiliary verbs? More... | |
| Article of the Day | |
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 The Salic LawThe Salic law was the rule of succession in some royal and noble European families that forbid females to succeed to certain titles or offices in the family. It likely came from the Salian Franks, who prohibited women from succeeding to the throne. The rule was most prominently enforced by the house of Valois and the succeeding house of Bourbon in France and was involved in the rivalry of Stephen and Matilda for the English throne. What impact did it have when Victoria became queen of England? More... | |
| This Day in History | |
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 Karen Carpenter Dies of Anorexia-Related Heart Failure (1983)Anorexia nervosa was a little-known disorder during Carpenter's life, but her death brought it lasting media attention. Performing alongside her brother Richard as half of the Carpenters duo, she had become a successful pop singer in the 1970s. Behind the scenes, however, her obsessive dieting and extreme weight fluctuations took a toll on her health, straining her heart. She succumbed to a heart attack at the age of 32. What is her husband said to have thrown into the casket at her funeral? More... | |
| Today's Birthday | |
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 Rosa Parks (1913)An icon of the US civil rights movement, Parks is often portrayed as a tired, elderly African-American seamstress who was arrested in Montgomery, Alabama, after deciding on the spur of the moment not to give up her bus seat to a white man. In reality, she was a fairly young woman who had been a civil rights activist long before her arrest, which sparked an unprecedented, successful boycott of the city's segregated bus system. How did Parks know the bus driver who had her arrested in 1955? More... | |
| Quotation of the Day | |
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 Love and scandal are the best sweeteners of tea.Henry Fielding (1707-1754) | |
| Idiom of the Day | |
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(the good) Lord willing and the creek don't rise— rural If all goes as it should; if everything goes well. More... | |
| Today's Holiday | |
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 Sri Lanka National Day (2018)The former British colony of Ceylon changed its name in 1972 to Sri Lanka, which means "Blessed Isle." Sri Lankans commemorate the granting of their independence from Great Britain on February 4, 1948, with public gatherings throughout the island and special services in the temples, churches, and mosques. There are also parades, folk dances, processions, and national games. More... | |
| Word Trivia | |
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Today's topic: rhetoricrhetor - A teacher of rhetoric or a master of it. More... climax - First described propositions in rhetoric, one rising above the other in effectiveness; it comes from Greek klimax, "ladder." More... demagoguery, demagogy - Demagoguery and demagogy are the practices or rhetoric of a demagogue. More... scheme - From Greek skhema, "figure, form," it first referred to a figure of speech, especially a figure of rhetoric, denoting a way of deviating from the ordinary use and order of words to create special effect. More... | |
| In the News | |
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 UK May Be First to Allow "3-Parent Babies"The UK House of Commons voted Tuesday to allow a method of in vitro fertilization that uses DNA from three people. The House of Lords must approve the proposal before it becomes law. If it does, the UK would become the first country to allow the technique, which is intended to limit the transfer of mitochondrial disease from mother to child by combining a donor's healthy mitochondrial DNA with nuclear DNA from the intended father and mother. The nuclear DNA of the donor egg would be removed in the process. Many ethical concerns about the process have been raised. More... | |