"Cross Road Blues" is a song written by the American blues artist Robert Johnson. He sang it as a solo piece with acoustic slide guitar in the Delta blues style. The lyrics describe Johnson's grief at being unable to catch a ride at an intersection before the sun sets. Some have attached a supernatural significance to the song. One of Johnson's two recorded performances was released in 1937 as a single, heard mainly in the Mississippi Delta area. The second, which reached a wider audience, was included on King of the Delta Blues Singers, a compilation album of some of Johnson's songs released in 1961 during the American folk music revival. Elmore James recorded a version of the song in 1954, and another in either 1960 or 1961. In the late 1960s, guitarist Eric Clapton and his bandmates in the British rock group Cream(pictured) popularized it as "Crossroads". Their blues rock interpretation became one of their best-known songs, inspiring many cover versions. (Full article...)
The Inaccessible Island rail (Laterallus rogersi) is a bird found only on Inaccessible Island in the South Atlantic Tristan archipelago. This rail, the smallest extant flightless bird, was described by physician Percy Lowe in 1923. The adult has brown plumage, a black bill, black feet, and red eyes. It occupies most habitats on the island, from the beaches to the central plateau, feeding on a variety of small invertebrates and some plant matter. Pairs are territorial and monogamous; both parents incubate the eggs and raise the chicks. The rail's adaptations to living on a tiny island at high densities include a low basal metabolic rate, small clutch sizes, and flightlessness. Unlike many other oceanic islands, Inaccessible Island has remained free from introduced predators, allowing this species to flourish while many other flightless rails have gone extinct. The species is nevertheless considered vulnerable, due to the danger of a single catastrophe wiping out the small, isolated population. (Full article...)
La Salute è in voi! ("Health/Salvation is in you!") was an early 1900s bomb-making handbook associated with the Galleanisti, followers of anarchistLuigi Galleani, particularly in the United States. The anonymously written, Italian-language handbook repackaged technical content from encyclopedias and applied chemistry books into plain directions for non-technical amateurs to build explosives. It wrapped this content in a political manifesto advocating for impoverished workers to overcome their despair and commit to individual, revolutionary acts. American police and historians used the handbook to profile anarchists and imply guilt by possession. It figured prominently in the prosecution of the Bresci Circle, a case that revolved around the anarchists' right to read. Successful political bombers of this era ultimately had career backgrounds in explosives and were not the self-taught amateurs the handbook sought to create. (Full article...)
The Western Chalukya Empire ruled most of the western Deccan, South India, between the 10th and 12th centuries. This Kannadiga dynasty is sometimes called the Kalyani Chalukya after its regal capital at Kalyani, today's Basavakalyan in the modern Bidar District of Karnataka state, and alternatively the Later Chalukya from its theoretical relationship to the sixth-century Chalukya dynasty of Badami. Prior to the rise of the Western and Eastern Chalukyas, the Rashtrakuta Empire of Manyakheta controlled most of the Deccan and Central India for over two centuries. In 973, seeing confusion in the Rashtrakuta Empire after a successful invasion of their capital by the ruler of the Paramara dynasty of Malwa, Tailapa II, a feudatory of the Rashtrakuta dynasty ruling from Bijapur region, defeated his overlords and made Manyakheta his capital. The dynasty quickly rose to power and grew into an empire under Someshvara I who moved the capital to Kalyani. (Full article...)
Our Lady of Perpetual Exemption was a legally recognized church in the United States established by the comedian and satirist John Oliver(pictured). Announced on August 16, 2015, in an episode of the television program Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, the church's purpose was to highlight and criticize televangelists, such as Kenneth Copeland and Robert Tilton, who Oliver argued used television broadcasts of Christian church services for private gain. Oliver also established Our Lady of Perpetual Exemption to draw attention to the tax-exempt status given to churches. During his show on September 13, 2015, Oliver announced that the church had received "thousands of dollars" and a variety of other items from viewers, and stated that the Church would be shutting down. All monetary donations were given to Doctors Without Borders. Oliver set up spinoffs of the Church in 2018 and 2021. The segments and later spinoff segments featured the comedian Rachel Dratch as Oliver's fictional wife, Wanda Jo. (Full article...)
Dorothy Olsen (July 10, 1916 – July 23, 2019) was an American aircraft pilot and member of the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASPs) during World War II. She developed an interest in aviation at a young age and earned her private pilot's license in 1939, when it was unusual for women to be pilots. In 1943, Olsen joined the newly-formed WASPs as a civil service employee. After training in Texas, she was assigned to the Sixth Ferrying Group in Long Beach, California, where she worked ferrying new aircraft from the factories where they were built to U.S. airbases. She flew more than 20 types of military airplanes, including high performance fighters – such as the P-51 and the twin-engine P-38 – which she favored over larger aircraft such as bombers. After the war, Olsen retired from flying and moved to Washington State, where she married, raised a family, and lived for the rest of her life. In 2009, she was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal honoring her service during the war. (Full article...)
"Can I Get It" is a song by English singer Adele from her fourth studio album, 30 (2021). Adele wrote the song with its producers, Max Martin and Shellback. It was released by Columbia Records as the album's sixth track on 19 November 2021. A pop song with pop rock and country pop influences, "Can I Get It" has acoustic guitar, drum, and horn instrumentation and a whistled hook. The song is about moving on from a breakup and desiring a committed relationship, exploring Adele's search for true love and a new relationship. Music critics were generally positive about its acoustic portion and lyrics but highly criticised its whistled hook. They thought the brazen pop production of "Can I Get It" catered to the tastes of mainstream radio, which made it an outlier on 30, and compared it to Flo Rida's single "Whistle" (2012). The song reached the top 20 in Sweden, Canada, Switzerland, Australia, Finland, and Norway and entered the top 40 in some other countries. (This article is part of a featured topic: 30 (album).)
The Take Ichi convoy was a Japaneseconvoy of World War II. The convoy, under the command of rear admiral Sadamichi Kajioka(pictured), left Shanghai on 17 April 1944, carrying two infantrydivisions to reinforce Japan's defensive positions in the Philippines and western New Guinea. United States Navysubmarines attacked the convoy on 26 April and 6 May, sinking four transports and killing more than 4,000 soldiers. These losses caused the convoy to be diverted to Halmahera, where the surviving soldiers and their equipment were unloaded. The failure to bring the two divisions to their destination without loss contributed to the Japanese Imperial General Headquarters' decision to move Japan's defensive perimeter back by 1,000 km (600 mi). The divisions' combat power was also blunted by their losses, and while they both saw action against United States Army forces, they contributed little to Japan's attempt to defend its empire. (Full article...)
The Structure of Literature is a 1954 book of literary criticism by Paul Goodman, the published version of his doctoral dissertation. It proposes a mode of formal literary analysis in which Goodman defines a formal structure within an isolated literary work, finds how parts of the work interact with each other to form a whole, and uses those definitions to study other works. Goodman analyzes multiple literary works as examples with close reading and genre discussion. Goodman finished his dissertation in 1940, but took 14 years to publish it. In mixed reviews, critics described the book as falling short of its aims; engaging psychological insight and incisive asides were mired in glaring style issues and jargon that made passages impenetrable or obscured his argument. Though Goodman contributed to the development of the Chicago School of Aristotelian formal literary criticism, he neither received wide academic recognition for his dissertation nor was his method accepted by his field. (Full article...)
Anna Blackburne (1726 – 30 December 1793) was an English botanist and collector. She was born at Orford Hall in Lancashire into a family of landowners and after her mother's death she remained there with her father, John Blackburne, who had hothouses for exotic plants and an extensive library. Anne taught herself Latin so she could read the Systema Naturae of Carl Linnaeus and created a natural history museum where she collected insects, shells, minerals and birds. She knew the naturalist Johann Reinhold Forster who instructed her in entomology, and corresponded with other naturalists, including Linnaeus. Her brother Ashton, who lived in New York, sent her specimens of North American birds. The naturalist Thomas Pennant described these birds in his Arctic Zoology. After her father's death, Anna and her museum moved to nearby Fairfield Hall. After her death, her nephew John Blackburne inherited her collection. Several species are named for her, including the Blackburnian warbler. (Full article...)
The horned sungem (Heliactin bilophus) is a hummingbird native to Brazil, Bolivia and Suriname. It prefers open habitats such as savanna, grassland and garden, and expanded its range into southern Amazonas and Espírito Santo, probably due to deforestation. It is a small hummingbird with a long tail and a short, black bill. The sexes differ in appearance, with males having two shiny red, golden, and green feather "horns" above the eyes, a shiny blue head crest and a black throat with a pointed "beard". The female is plainer, with a brown or yellow-buff throat. It is a nomadic species, responding to the seasonal flowering of its food plants. If a flower's shape is unsuited to the bird's short bill, it may rob nectar through a hole at its base. It also eats small insects. Only the female builds the small cup nest, incubates the two white eggs, and rears the chicks. The species is currently classified as least concern, and its population is thought to be increasing. (Full article...)
1877 – An earthquake struck northern Chile, leading to the deaths of 2,385 people, mostly victims of the ensuing tsunami, as far away as Hawaii and Fiji.
Leucippus was a Greek philosopher of the 5th century BCE. He is credited with founding atomism, with his student Democritus. Leucippus divided the world into two entities: atoms, indivisible particles that make up all things, and the void, the nothingness between the atoms. Leucippus's ideas were influential in ancient and Renaissance philosophy. They were a precursor to modern atomic theory, but the two are only superficially similar. Leucippus's atoms come in infinitely many forms, all in constant motion, creating a deterministic world created by the collisions of atoms. The soul is viewed as an arrangement of spherical atoms, cycled through the body by respiration and creating thought and sensory input. Little is known of his life, with a few scholars doubting that he existed, attributing his ideas purely to Democritus. Two works are attributed to Leucippus, The Great World System and On Mind, but all of his writing has been lost except for one sentence. (Full article...)
Thank You is the second major-label studio album by American singer-songwriter Meghan Trainor. Epic Records released it on May 13, 2016. Trainor wrote it with Jacob Kasher Hindlin and producer Ricky Reed, among others, incorporating various genres to showcase her versatility. Thank You is a pop, dance-pop, and R&B album with themes such as self-acceptance, empowerment, and fame. Trainor promoted it with televised performances and the Untouchable Tour (2016). Thank You's singles included "No" and "Me Too", which reached the top twenty in the US. A few reviewers thought its production was an improvement from her 2015 album Title, while others believed it lacked artistic identity and criticized the lyrical themes. Thank You debuted at number three in the US. It reached the top five in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Scotland, and the United Kingdom and received Platinum certifications in the US and Canada. (This article is part of two featured topics: Thank You (Meghan Trainor album) and Meghan Trainor albums.)
1938 – During an exercise to demonstrate air power, United States Army Air Corps bomber aircraft intercepted the Italian ocean liner SS Rex(pictured) 620 nautical miles (1,100 km) off the US Atlantic coast.
Marty Stratton and Hugo Martin, the game's directors
Doom is a first-person shooter video game and a reboot of the Doom franchise released on May 13, 2016. Players take the role of an unnamed space marine who battles demonic forces within an energy-mining facility on Mars and in Hell. The game also has an online multiplayer mode and a level editor. Developer id Software and co-developers took eight years to make the game. Their "Doom 4" project was fully overhauled in 2011 to better replicate the tone of the 1993 original Doom. Bethesda Softworks published the 2016 Doom as the first major series installment following Doom 3 in 2004. Its single-player campaign, graphics, soundtrack, and gameplay received considerable praise, while its multiplayer mode drew significant criticism. Doom became a best-seller, with over two million PC copies sold by the next year. Multiple industry outlets named Doom among 2016's best video games. It received a sequel four years later. (Full article...)
2000 – An explosion(aftermath pictured) at a fireworks factory in Enschede, Netherlands, resulted in 23 deaths and approximately €450 million in damage.
Operation Title was an unsuccessful Allied attack on the German battleship Tirpitz during World War II. The Allies considered Tirpitz to be a major threat to their shipping and after several Royal Air Force heavy bomber raids failed to inflict any damage it was decided to use Royal Navymidget submarines instead. Operation Title involved a pair of two-man British Chariots which were transported to Norway on board a small boat named Arthur. Both Chariots were lost when bad weather caused them to detach from Arthur on 31 October. It was not possible for the Allied boat to reach the sea due to German security measures, and Arthur was scuttled. The Allied personnel attempted to escape overland and all but one reached neutral Sweden on 5 November. The other – a British serviceman – was taken prisoner by German forces and murdered on 19 January 1943. Tirpitz was eventually sunk by another bomber raid on 12 November 1944. (Full article...)
Hö'elün (fl. 1162–1210) was a Mongolian noblewoman and the mother of Temüjin, better known as Genghis Khan. She played a major role in his rise to power. Born into the Olkhonud clan of the Onggirat tribe, Hö'elün was originally married to Chiledu, but was captured shortly after her wedding by Yesügei, an important member of the Mongols, becoming his primary wife. She and Yesügei had three sons and one daughter, as well as Temüjin. After Yesügei was fatally poisoned and the Mongols abandoned her family, Hö'elün shepherded all her children through poverty to adulthood—her resilience and organisational skills have been remarked upon by historians. She continued to play an important role after Temüjin's marriage to Börte. Hö'elün married Münglig, an old retainer of Yesügei, in thanks for his support after a damaging defeat. During the next decades, she arranged marriages, maintained alliances, and was heavily involved in disputes between Genghis, his brothers, and Münglig's sons. (Full article...)
1987 – An Iraqi jet aircraft fired two Exocet missiles at the American frigate USS Stark leaving 37 personnel of the warship dead and 21 others injured.
Tropical Storm Hernan intensifying offshore Mexico on August 26.
Tropical Storm Hernan was a short-lived tropical cyclone that caused widespread flooding and destructive mudslides across southwestern Mexico in late August 2020. The eighth named storm of the 2020 Pacific hurricane season, Hernan formed to the southwest of Mexico on August 26. The cyclone peaked with maximum sustained winds of 75 km/h and a minimum atmospheric pressure of 1001 millibars, before passing just offshore western Mexico and dissipating in the Gulf of California. Hernan, despite not making landfall, dropped extremely heavy rainfall across several states, peaking at nearly 610 millimeters (24 inches) in Jalisco. Over 305 millimeters (12 inches) of rain fell across the Costa Grande of Guerrero from August 24–27. 1,674 homes and 9 schools all suffered severe damage. A man died after falling off his roof checking damages from Hernan. The cyclone caused a total of MXN$594.05 million (USD$26.91 million) in damages across seven states along the Pacific coast of Mexico. (Full article...)
1936 – In a crime that captivated Japan, Sada Abe(pictured) strangled her lover, cut off his genitals, and carried them around with her for several days until her arrest.
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