Daily Content Archive
(as of Friday, August 30, 2019)| Word of the Day | |||||||
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paragon
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| Daily Grammar Lesson | |
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Defining the SlashThe slash ( / ) serves a number of purposes in writing, essentially standing in for other words as a quick and clear way of showing the connection between two things. What is a slash technically known as? More... | |
| Article of the Day | |
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 Tyrian PurpleTyrian purple is a purple-red natural dye that was highly prized in the ancient world because it did not fade from weathering and sunlight but instead became brighter and more intense. Excreted by the hypobranchial gland of certain mollusks of the genus Murex, Tyrian purple was expensive and a status symbol tightly controlled by sumptuary laws. In Byzantium, it was restricted to coloring silks for imperial use. How is the dye substance used by the sea snails that secrete it? More... | |
| This Day in History | |
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 Thurgood Marshall Confirmed as First African-American US Supreme Court Justice (1967)The great-grandson of a slave and the first African American to serve on the US Supreme Court, Marshall was appointed by President Lyndon B. Johnson at the height of the Civil Rights movement. As a lawyer, he won 29 of the 32 cases he argued before the Supreme Court, including the landmark Brown v. Board of Education and others that established equal protection for African Americans in housing, voting, employment, and education. What church has included Marshall in its calendar of saints? More... | |
| Today's Birthday | |
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 Muriel Ellen Deason, AKA Kitty Wells (1919)Born in Nashville, Tennessee, Wells sang gospel music in church as a child and performed on radio in the 1930s. She achieved fame with her 1952 hit, "It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels," a rebuttal to a popular song about wayward women. It made her the first female musician to top the country music charts, paving the way for later female country stars such as Loretta Lynn and Patsy Cline. She sang about topics such as drinking and divorce. How did radio stations react to her first hit? More... | |
| Quotation of the Day | |
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 The older one grows, the more one likes indecency.Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) | |
| Idiom of the Day | |
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housewarming (party)— A party thrown to celebrate when someone moves into a new apartment, flat, or house. More... | |
| Today's Holiday | |
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 Goombay! (2020)Goombay! is a celebration of African and Caribbean heritage, culture, and arts held during the last weekend of August at Eagle and Market Streets in Asheville, North Carolina. Goombay is a Bantu word that refers both to a goatskin drum and to the music played on it. Activities include dance and stilt performances, as well as entertainers in a variety of musical styles, such as reggae, R&B, jazz, and Afro-fusion. In addition, festivalgoers may take part in games, mask making, demonstrations of traditional crafts, or African percussion lessons. More... | |
| Word Trivia | |
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Today's topic: measuringcord - An amount of wood containing 128 cubic feet (4x4x8 feet); the name comes from the old practice of measuring a stack of firewood with a cord of a certain length. To cord is to stack or put up wood in cords. More... drosometer - An instrument for measuring the amount of dew on a surface. More... isometric - From Latin isus, "equal," and -metria, "measuring." More... Mach - The scale measuring the speed of an object or fluid relative to the speed of sound is named for philosopher/physicist Ernst Mach (1838-1916), who researched thermodynamics; Mach is the ratio of the speed of something to the speed of sound in the surrounding medium. More... | |