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Thomas A. Spragens (1917–2006) was an American administrator who was the 17th president of Centre College in Danville, Kentucky. A graduate of the University of Kentucky, Spragens worked for the state and federal government early in his career before joining the staff at Stanford University as a presidential advisor. He was the president of Stephens College in Columbia, Missouri, for a five-year term, and left Stephens for Centre in 1957. He was an effective fundraiser and was instrumental in the school's integration; Centre admitted its first black student in 1962 and hired its first black faculty member in 1971. While in office, he helped to facilitate the founding of what is now the Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference, and he attended the 1968 Democratic National Convention as a delegate to support Senator Eugene McCarthy. He resigned in 1981, at which point Centre's enrollment and faculty numbers had both nearly doubled and its endowment had grown. (Full article...)

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Interior of St. Maria, Landau

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In the news

Jair Bolsonaro

In Brazil, the Superior Electoral Court bars former president Jair Bolsonaro (pictured) from running for political office until 2030 for abuse of power ahead of the 2022 general election.
Riots break out across France after a 17-year-old is fatally shot by police in Paris.
In Russia, the Wagner mercenary group stands down after rebelling against the government.
In China, an explosion at a restaurant in Yinchuan kills 31 people.

On this day

July 2

Aftermath of the Jerusalem ramming attack

706 – The bodies of Emperor Gaozong of Tang and Empress Wu Zetian were interred in the Qianling Mausoleum.
1644 – First English Civil War: The combined forces of Scottish Covenanters and English Parliamentarians defeated Royalist troops at the Battle of Marston Moor.
1941 – A German SS unit arrived in Vilnius, Lithuania, and began the systematic execution of up to 100,000 people over the next three years.
2008 – Israeli–Palestinian conflict: An Arab man rammed a loader into traffic in Jerusalem, killing three people and injuring 40 others (damage pictured).
2013 – The International Astronomical Union announced that the fourth and fifth moons of Pluto to be discovered would be named Kerberos and Styx, respectively.

Fumiko Hori (b. 1918)
Wisława Szymborska (b. 1923)
Carlos Menem (b. 1930)
Douglas Engelbart (d. 2013)

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Today's featured picture

The Chatham albatross (Thalassarche eremita) is a medium-sized black-and-white albatross which breeds only on The Pyramid, a large rock stack in the Chatham Islands, New Zealand. It is sometimes treated as a subspecies of the shy albatross Thalassarche cauta. It is the smallest of the shy albatross group.

Photograph credit: JJ Harrison

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