Daily Content Archive
(as of Wednesday, February 21, 2024)| Word of the Day | |||||||
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apothegm
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| Daily Grammar Lesson | |
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Possessive DeterminersPossessive determiners, also known as possessive adjectives, are a class of determiners that are used to modify nouns to denote possession. We use a different possessive determiner to correspond with each personal pronoun. What are the main possessive determiners in English? More... | |
| Article of the Day | |
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 PFOAThough the US Environmental Protection Agency labeled perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) a likely carcinogen in 2006, it continues to be widely used in food packaging and in the processing of Teflon non-stick coatings. Traces of PFOA-family chemicals can now be found in the blood of most Americans and in the environment worldwide. Of particular concern is the grease resistant fluorotelomer coating used in the production of microwave popcorn packages. How does the PFOA from popcorn bags get ingested? More... | |
| This Day in History | |
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 The Creation of the Peace Symbol (1958)Historically, the idea of peace has been represented by symbols that attempt to transcend differences of culture, such as the white dove, the olive branch, and the broken rifle. The now-familiar line-drawing of a crow's foot in a circle was created specifically for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament by British artist Gerald Holtom, but it quickly caught on as a general, international sign for peace. Holtom has stated that it is derived from the semaphore flag signals for what two letters? More... | |
| Today's Birthday | |
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 Jeanne Calment (1875)At the age of 100, Calment was still riding a bicycle around her native Arles, France. She lived on her own until she was 110 and smoked until she was 117. She saw the Eiffel Tower being built and remembered selling colored pencils to Vincent van Gogh as a girl in her family's shop. By the time she died in 1997 at the age of 122, Calment had lived the longest confirmed human life in history—and outlived her entire family. What foods have been cited as contributing to Calment's longevity? More... | |
| Quotation of the Day | |
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 Heroes, notwithstanding the high ideas which, by the means of flatterers, they may entertain of themselves, or the world may conceive of them, have certainly more of mortal than divine about them.Henry Fielding (1707-1754) | |
| Idiom of the Day | |
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big eyes— A longing and/or pleading look, often in an attempt to get what one wants. More... | |
| Today's Holiday | |
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 Shaheed Day (2025)Before becoming an autonomous country in 1971, Bangladesh had been East Pakistan ever since India gained independence from Britain in 1947. West Pakistan wanted to make its language, Urdu, the only official language of both Pakistans. Most of the people in East Pakistan spoke Bengali, and they opposed the restriction of the use of their language in government and commerce. In 1952, university students held protests that erupted in violence. Lives were lost, and, as a memorial, people form a procession from the Azimpur graveyard on February 21 each year. More... | |
| Word Trivia | |
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Today's topic: healthyhealthy, healthful - Healthy is a positive descriptive of a person's (or personified thing's) physical state; healthful is used of something that favorably affects or promotes that state. More... vegete - Describing something healthy and active, flourishing in respect to health and vigor. More... orthorexia - An obsession with eating only "healthy" food. More... insane, insanity - Latin sanus, "healthy," is part of insane and insanity. More... | |