Welcome to Dailypedia

DEFINITION: (adjective) Requiring much effort or expense; demanding attention. SYNONYMS: crying, insistent, clamant, instant. USAGE: The professor regarded literary questions as exigent and momentous.

One of the best known US painters of the 20th century, O'Keeffe is known chiefly for her large, semi-abstract studies of flowers, bones, and other imagery. Immaculate, sculptural, organic forms painted in strong, clear colors predominate in O'Keeffe's works, and her pristine abstract designs carry strong elements of sexual symbolism. Her work was first exhibited in 1916 at the 291 Gallery of Alfred Stieglitz, whom she married in 1924. In 1928, a group of O'Keeffe's paintings sold for what price?

On Nov. 15, 1889, Marshal Deodoro da Fonseca deposed the emperor Dom Pedro II, declared Brazil a republic, and reorganized the country's government. The republicans named Fonseca president, but his government was divided by the animosity between Fonseca and his vice president, Floriano Peixoto, and public opinion of the president soon soured. Instability and violence characterized the decade that followed. What export crop led to significant developments in Brazil's economy during this period?

The Han dynasty ruled China from 202 BCE to 220 CE. During the period of civil strife that followed the fall of the Ch'in dynasty, Liu Pang, a farmer and guerilla fighter, defeated his rivals for the throne and established himself as the first Han emperor. Under Han rule, the harsh laws of the Ch'in were repealed, taxes were lightened, and the absolute autocracy of the emperor was lessened. Which emperor is credited with China's shift from the Taoist system to the Confucian ideal?

Eric York, a wildlife biologist at Arizona's Grand Canyon National Park, has died after performing a necropsy, or post-mortem examination, on a mountain lion. Officials believe that York contracted the pneumonic plague from the infected animal and succumbed to the disease just days after showing symptoms. On average, only 13 cases of the plague are reported in the US each year and 14 percent prove fatal. It is transmitted primarily by fleas that have had direct contact with an infected animal, but when it causes pneumonia, it can then be passed along by airborne cough droplets.