Daily Content Archive

Word of the Day
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Article of the Day

The Tower of London The Tower of London is an ancient fortress covering approximately 13 acres (5.3 hectares) on the northern bank of the River Thames. The central keep, known as the White Tower because it was built of limestone, was begun around 1078 by William I the Conqueror and became the nucleus of a series of concentric defenses. The Tower, now used mainly as a museum, was a royal residence in the Middle Ages and later a jail for illustrious prisoners such as Anne Boleyn, Guy Fawkes, and what future queen? More...

This Day in History

"BTK" Serial Killer Dennis Rader Pleads Guilty to 10 Murders (2005) Rader was a city employee, married father of two, Boy Scout leader, and an active churchgoer—and a serial killer. From 1974 to 1991, he killed 10 people in and around Wichita, Kansas. In 2004, after years of silence, he resumed taunting police and local media with letters describing the murders. In February 2005, police used information on a floppy disk he had sent them to locate and arrest him. He pled guilty that June. Five days after his arrest, he was fired from his job—for what? More...

Today's Birthday

Lafcadio Hearn (1850) Born in Greece and educated in Ireland, Hearn immigrated to the US at age 19 and lived in poverty for a time until he found employment as a journalist. He was a colorful but morbidly discontented man, admired for his highly polished tales of the macabre. In 1890, a magazine sent him to Japan, where he married a Japanese woman, took a Japanese name, and became a citizen. His subsequent books offered the West its first thoughtful view of Japanese culture. What partial disability did he have? More...

Quotation of the Day
When we quarrel, how we wish we had been blameless. Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

Idiom of the Day
be caught off (one's) guard — To be taken by surprise; to be caught when one is vulnerable, careless, or inattentive. More...

Today's Holiday

Tajikistan Day of National Unity (2025) On June 27, 1997, a treaty was signed between Islamic rebels and the Russian-backed Tajikistan government, bringing to an end a five-year-long civil war. The day is remembered as the Day of National Unity. On the Day of National Unity in 2007, the Tajik parliament passed a law granting amnesty to all rebels who had fought against the government, provided they had not committed murder, rape, human or drug trafficking, or terrorism. Some 2,000 prison inmates were released under the new law. The 2007 commemoration also marked the opening of 11 new buildings in the city of Dushanbe. More...