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Today's featured article

Stanley Price Weir (23 April 1866 – 14 November 1944) was a public servant and Australian Army officer. During World War I, he commanded the 10th Battalion of the Australian Imperial Force during the landing at Anzac Cove and the Gallipoli campaign against the Ottoman Turks, and during the battles of Pozières and Mouquet Farm in France. Weir returned to Australia at his own request at the age of 50 in late 1916, when he was appointed as the first public service commissioner of South Australia. In 1917 he was awarded the Distinguished Service Order and was mentioned in despatches for his performance at Pozières and Mouquet Farm. On his retirement from the Australian Military Forces in 1921, he was given an honorary promotion to brigadier general, only the second officer born in South Australia to reach this rank. Before his retirement from public service in 1931, Weir was the chairman of both the Central Board of Health and the Public Relief Board. (Full article...)

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Did you know...

Mamiko Tanaka

... that Shohei Ohtani married "a normal Japanese woman" (pictured) who used to play professional basketball?
... that the color of a black-headed tailorbird's throat was thought to depend on sex, but later turned out to depend on age?
... that John Morin Scott, the mayor of Philadelphia, responded to the 1842 Lombard Street riot by mostly arresting black victims?
... that a 17th-century male-authored book was adapted to argue in favor of women's superiority?
... that Bill Shearer, a leader of the segregationist George Wallace's 1968 presidential campaign, also advocated for ballot access for the Socialist Workers Party?
... that in many works of fiction, the asteroid belt is the remnants of a destroyed planet?
... that the celebrity doctor Nandipha Magudumana was imprisoned and investigated for twelve crimes, including murder connected to a fugitive's prison escape?
... that the release of the EP Spitfire crashed the servers of the online music store Beatport?
... that the discovery of Descartes' theorem in geometry came from a too-difficult mathematics problem posed to a princess?

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Ichthyotitan, the largest known marine reptile (size comparison shown), is formally described.
Flooding in the Persian Gulf and Arabian Peninsula leaves more than thirty people dead.
The historic Børsen in Copenhagen, Denmark, is severely damaged by a fire.
A knife attack in Sydney, Australia, leaves seven people dead.
In retaliation for an Israeli airstrike on the Iranian consulate in Damascus, Iran conducts missile and drone strikes against Israel.

On this day...

April 23: First day of Passover (Judaism); National Sovereignty and Children's Day in Turkey; the Third Month Fair begins in Dali City, China (2024)

Liberation of Flossenbürg

1467 – Ottoman wars in Europe: Albanian leader Skanderbeg defeated an Ottoman army under Ballaban Badera to raise the siege of Krujë.
1945 – World War II: The US Army's 90th Infantry Division liberated Flossenbürg concentration camp (pictured) in Germany, freeing 1,500 prisoners.
1976 – The American band the Ramones released their debut album, which became highly influential on the emerging punk rock movement.
1979 – Blair Peach, a British activist, was fatally injured after being knocked unconscious during an Anti-Nazi League demonstration against a National Front election meeting in Southall, London.
2018 – A man intentionally struck pedestrians with a van on Yonge Street in Toronto, Canada, leading to 11 deaths.

Joan of France (b. 1464)
Pandita Ramabai (b. 1858)
Satyajit Ray (d. 1992)

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Today's featured picture

Bistorta officinalis, also known as the common bistort, is a species of flowering plant in the dock family Polygonaceae. It is native to Europe and northern and western Asia, but has also been cultivated and become naturalized in other parts of the world such as in the United States. It is typically found growing in moist meadows, nutrient-rich wooded swamps, forest edges, wetlands, parks, gardens and disturbed ground. A herbaceous perennial, it grows to a height of 20 to 80 centimetres (8 to 31 inches). It blooms from late spring into autumn, producing tall, erect, unbranched and hairless stems ending in single terminal racemes that are club-like spikes, 5 to 7 centimetres (2 to 3 inches) long, of rose-pink flowers. This B. officinalis inflorescence was photographed in the Austrian Alps.

Photograph credit: Uoaei1

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