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Thomas Percy was a member of the failed Gunpowder Plot. Following King James's accession to the English throne in 1603, Percy became disenchanted with the new king, who he supposed had reneged on his promises of toleration for English Catholics. He joined Robert Catesby's conspiracy to kill the King and his ministers by blowing up the House of Lords with gunpowder. Percy helped fund the group and secured the leases to properties in London, including the undercroft beneath the House of Lords where the gunpowder was placed. When the plot was exposed on 5 November 1605, Percy fled to the Midlands, catching up with other conspirators travelling to Dunchurch. At the border of Staffordshire, they were besieged by the Sheriff of Worcester and his men. Percy was reportedly killed by the same musket ball as Catesby and was buried nearby. His body was later exhumed, and his head exhibited outside Parliament. (This article is part of a featured topic: Gunpowder Plot.)

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Did you know ...

Sana, vocalist of Sajou no Hana

... that the name of the Japanese band Sajou no Hana (vocalist pictured) has no official meaning?
... that From Warsaw to Ojców, a 1897 Polish adventure and travel novel for young readers, was inspired by Jules Verne's works but reflects Polish patriotic and educational values?
... that a portrait engraver made the controversial decision to change a Sioux chief's war bonnet so that it would fit on the 1899 United States five-dollar silver certificate?
... that Charli XCX once followed George Daniel into a toilet but stopped halfway, and later wrote the song "Talk Talk" about the experience?
... that Rose O'Neill's marriage to Hugh Roe O'Donnell united two powerful noble families that had been rivals for centuries?
... that the practice of some Christians of making the lesser sign of the cross has been traced back to the 11th century?
... that Frederick Prigg and his predecessor as secretary of the Provisional Government of Oregon were both doctors who drowned in a river at Oregon City just three years apart?
... that a rainbow plaque marks the site of Peckham's Black Lesbian and Gay Centre?
... that one of the paintings sold by Beijing Hanhai was stolen by an emperor, and another was hidden in a well?

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A canopy collapse at Serbia's Novi Sad railway station kills fourteen people.
The ruins of a Maya city, dubbed Valeriana, are discovered in Campeche, Mexico.
Duma Boko becomes the president of Botswana after the general election is won by the opposition Umbrella for Democratic Change.

On this day

November 5: Election Day (United States) (2024); Guy Fawkes Night in Great Britain and some Commonwealth countries

Aline Chrétien

1138 – Lý Anh Tông was enthroned as the emperor of Đại Việt at the age of two, beginning a 37-year reign.
1943 – World War II: An unknown aircraft dropped four bombs on Vatican City, which maintained neutrality during the war.
1995 – Aline Chrétien (pictured) thwarted André Dallaire's attempt to assassinate her husband, Canadian prime minister Jean Chrétien, by locking the bedroom door in 24 Sussex Drive, their official residence in Ottawa.
2003 – American serial killer Gary Ridgway pleaded guilty to 48 counts of first-degree murder.
2013 – The Indian Space Research Organisation launched the Mars Orbiter Mission, India's first interplanetary probe.

Louis Bertrand Castel (b. 1688)
Edwin Flack (b. 1873)
James Robert Baker (d. 1997)
Habibollah Asgaroladi (d. 2013)

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Today's featured picture

The tentacled flathead (Papilloculiceps longiceps) is a species of marine fish belonging to the flathead family, Platycephalidae. It is found in the western Indian Ocean, including the Red Sea, and also in the Mediterranean Sea, probably as a result of migration through the Suez Canal. The tentacled flathead is a well camouflaged, ambush predator of fish and crustaceans, living near coral reefs on sand or rubble substrates at depths of up to 15 metres (49 feet). The species has an elongate body, with a maximum published length of 70 centimetres (28 inches), although 50 centimetres (20 inches) is more typical. It has a depressed head with five prominent nuchal spines, ridges on its operculum and preoperculum, a spine on the rear of the suborbital ridge, and smaller spines elsewhere. The body is mottled brownish or greenish dorsally, and whitish ventrally. There are three or four dark bands on the caudal fin, and the other fins are marked with large, dark blotches. This tentacled flathead was photographed in the Red Sea in Ras Muhammad National Park, off the southern coast of the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt.

Photograph credit: Diego Delso

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