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Today's featured article

Taylor Swift

"Wildest Dreams" is a song by the American singer-songwriter Taylor Swift (pictured); it is the fifth single from her fifth studio album, 1989 (2014). Described by critics as synth-pop, dream pop, and electropop, the song was written by Swift and its producers Max Martin and Shellback. The lyrics feature Swift pleading with a lover to remember her even after their relationship ends. Retrospectively, critics have described "Wildest Dreams" as one of Swift's most memorable songs. The single peaked within the top five on charts in Australia, Canada, Poland, South Africa, and also the United States, where it became 1989's fifth consecutive top-ten single on the Billboard Hot 100. The track was certified four-times platinum. The music video depicts Swift as a classical Hollywood actress who falls in love with her co-star; media publications praised the production as cinematic but accused the video of glorifying colonialism. (This article is part of a featured topic: 1989 (album).)

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In the news

Keir Starmer

The Labour Party wins the United Kingdom general election and Keir Starmer (pictured) becomes prime minister.
Hurricane Beryl, the earliest-recorded Category 5 Atlantic hurricane, leaves at least 12 people dead in the Caribbean and Venezuela.
In the Netherlands, a new cabinet is sworn in, with Dick Schoof serving as the prime minister.
A stampede during a religious event in Uttar Pradesh, India, leaves at least 120 people dead.

Today's featured picture

The grey-crowned babbler (Pomatostomus temporalis) is a species of bird in the family Pomatostomidae, the Australo-Papuan babblers. It is found in Australia, Indonesia, and Papua New Guinea. Its habitats include subtropical, tropical dry and tropical moist lowland forests and shrublands as well as savanna. This photograph shows a group of grey-crowned babblers in Binya, New South Wales, Australia.

Photograph credit: John Harrison

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Did you know...

Paul Parkman

... that Paul Parkman (pictured), one of the developers of the rubella vaccine, did not monetize the patent so that the vaccine could be freely available?
... that according to a former military journalist, 80,000 copies of a command information newspaper were dumped into the South China Sea during the Vietnam War?
... that despite specializing in literature and serving as a senior editor of the Zhonghua Book Company, historian Zhang Zhenglang never published a single book of his own?
... that AJR's "Way Less Sad" samples the final trumpet riff of Simon & Garfunkel's "My Little Town" as its primary hook?
... that when MT Petar Hektorović was temporarily reassigned, one resident of Vis wrote an online memorial to the ship, writing "the waves of Vis grieve for you"?
... that Drew Thomas, a former car salesman, reached the finals of the NBC show Last Comic Standing?
... that the Bad Dürrenberg shaman may have been able to block blood vessels to her brain by holding her head at certain angles?
... that a New York man built a house with materials from several 1964 New York World's Fair pavilions?
... that putting pre-moistened meat diapers in pre-packaged meat is a form of weight fraud?

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