Castell Coch is a 19th-century Gothic Revival castle built above the village of Tongwynlais in South Wales. The first castle on the site was built by the Normans after 1081 to protect the newly conquered town of Cardiff. The castle's earth motte was reused by Gilbert de Clare as the basis for a new stone fortification, built between 1267 and 1277. John Crichton-Stuart, 3rd Marquess of Bute, inherited the castle ruins in 1848. One of Britain's wealthiest men, he employed the architect William Burges to reconstruct the castle as a summer residence. Burges rebuilt the outside before his death in 1881, and the interior work was finished by his team in 1891; it featured elaborate decorations including extensive use of symbolism drawing on themes from classical mythology and legend. Crichton-Stuart planted a vineyard just below the castle, where wine production continued until the First World War. Castell Coch is considered to be one of the best surviving examples of Victorian architecture. (Full article...)
The new wave of British heavy metal began in the late 1970s and achieved international attention by the early 1980s. Encompassing diverse mainstream and underground styles, the music often infused 1970s heavy metal music with the intensity of punk rock to produce fast and aggressive songs. The do-it-yourself ethic of the new metal bands led to the spread of raw-sounding, self-produced recordings and a proliferation of independent record labels. Song lyrics were usually about escapist themes from mythology, fantasy, horror or the rock lifestyle. The movement involved mostly young, white, male musicians and fans of the heavy metal subculture, whose behavioural and visual codes were quickly adopted by metal fans worldwide after the spread of the music globally. The movement spawned perhaps a thousand bands, but only a few survived the rise of MTV and glam metal. Among them, Motörhead(singer pictured) and Saxon had considerable success, and Iron Maiden and Def Leppard became international stars. (Full article...)
"Telephone" is a song by Lady Gaga featuring Beyoncé(both pictured) and released on January 26, 2010. "Telephone" conveys Gaga's fear of not finding time for fun given the increasing pressure for her to work harder. The song consists of an expanded bridge and verse-rap; Beyoncé appears in the middle of the song, singing the verses in a "rapid-fire" way, accompanied by double beats. "Telephone" received positive reviews from critics who praised Gaga's chemistry with Beyoncé. It was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals. The song charted in many countries and sold 7.4 million digital copies worldwide in 2010, making it the year's fourth best-selling single. The music video follows Beyoncé as she bails Gaga out of prison for killing her boyfriend and ends with the two trying to escape a high-speed police chase. The video received generally positive reviews and was nominated for three awards at the 2010 MTV Video Music Awards. (Full article...)
1934 – Hurtig & Seamon's New Burlesque Theater in New York City reopened as the Apollo Theater, becoming one of the nation's premier venues for African-American performers.
The Holocaust in Bohemia and Moravia resulted in the deportation, dispossession, and murder of most of the pre–World War II population of Jews in the Czech lands that were annexed by Nazi Germany between 1939 and 1945. From the pre-war population of 118,310 some 30,000 Jews managed to emigrate. Most of the remaining Jews were deported to other Nazi-controlled territories, starting in October 1939 as part of the Nisko Plan. In October 1941, mass deportations of Protectorate Jews began. Beginning in November 1941, the transports departed for Theresienstadt Ghetto in the Protectorate which was a stopping-point before deportation to other ghettos, extermination camps, and other killing sites. About 80,000 Jews from Bohemia and Moravia were murdered in the Holocaust. After the war, many Jews faced obstacles in regaining their property and pressure to assimilate into the Czech majority. Most Jews emigrated; a few were deported as part of the expulsion of Germans from Czechoslovakia. (Full article...)
Lewis W. Green (January 28, 1806 – May 26, 1863) was an American Presbyterian minister, educator, and academic administrator. Born in Danville, Kentucky, and educated in Woodford County, he enrolled at Transylvania University but transferred to Centre College to complete his degree. He graduated in 1824 as one of two members of Centre's first graduating class. He enrolled at Princeton Theological Seminary in 1831 but returned to Kentucky the following year. He spent time as a professor and minister before returning to Centre in 1839 as its vice president. In January 1849, he was elected president of Hampden–Sydney College, where he spent eight years. He left to become president of Transylvania in November 1856 shortly following the establishment of a normal school there by the Kentucky General Assembly. He resigned a year later, following the repeal of the bill that created the normal school, and became president of Centre. He led his alma mater through parts of the Civil War and died in office in May 1863. (Full article...)
Dominik Hašek (born 29 January 1965) is a Czech former ice hockey goaltender. He won the Vezina Trophy six times with the National Hockey League (NHL), the most under the award's current system. In 1998, he became the first goaltender to win the Hart Memorial Trophy twice. During the 1998 Winter Olympics, he led the Czech national ice hockey team to its first Olympic gold medal. In 2002, Hašek became the first European-trained starting goaltender to win the Stanley Cup and set a record for shutouts in a postseason year. He was considered an unorthodox goaltender, with a distinct style that led to him being labeled a "flopper". He holds the highest career save percentage of all time, and is the only goaltender to face the most shots per 60 minutes and have the highest save percentage in the same season. Hašek was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame and is a member of the Czech Ice Hockey Hall of Fame and the IIHF Hall of Fame. His number was retired by the Buffalo Sabres and HC Pardubice. (Full article...)
Nihilism (Spring/Summer 1994) is the third collection by the British designer Alexander McQueen for his fashion house. An eclectic collection with no straightforward theme, it pushed back against dominant womenswear trends with its hard tailoring and aggressive, sexualised styling. It was created in collaboration with McQueen's associates Simon Ungless and Fleet Bigwood. McQueen's first professional runway show, Nihilism included experimental techniques, silhouettes and materials, such as dresses made from cellophane, stained with clay or adorned with dead locusts. The styling was intended to be provocative and disturbing. The clothing was highly sexualised: thin fabric that exposed the skin underneath or garments cut to expose breasts and vulvas. The collection received mixed reviews. Journalists had a difficult time deciding what to make of it. McQueen returned to many of the ideas he explored in Nihilism throughout his lifetime, especially the interplay of sexuality and violence. (Full article...)
Stanley Green (1915–1993) was a sandwich man who became a well-known figure in London during the latter part of the 20th century. For 25 years Green patrolled Oxford Street, carrying a placard that advocated "Less Lust, By Less Protein: Meat Fish Bird; Egg Cheese; Peas Beans; Nuts. And Sitting", with the wording and punctuation changing over the years. Arguing that protein made people lustful and aggressive, his solution was "protein wisdom", a low-protein diet for "better, kinder, happier people". For a few pence, passers-by could buy his 14-page pamphlet, Eight Passion Proteins with Care, which reportedly sold 87,000 copies over 20 years. He became one of London's much-loved eccentrics, though his campaign was not invariably popular, leading to two arrests for obstruction and the need to wear green overalls to protect himself from spit. When he died at the age of 78, his pamphlets, placards, and letters were passed to the Museum of London. (Full article...)
Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that examines the basic structure of reality. Some philosophers designate it as first philosophy to suggest that it is more fundamental than other forms of philosophical inquiry. It is traditionally seen as the study of mind-independent features of the world, but some theorists view it as an inquiry into the conceptual framework of human understanding. Metaphysics investigates the nature of existence, the features all entities have in common, and their division into categories of being. An influential division is between particulars and universals. Modal metaphysics examines what it means for something to be possible or necessary. Metaphysicians also explore the concepts of space, time, and change, and their connection to causality and the laws of nature. Other topics include how mind and matter are related, whether everything in the world is predetermined, and whether there is free will. The roots of metaphysics lie in antiquity with speculations about the nature and origin of the universe. (Full article...)
James Joyce (2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941) was an Irish novelist, poet and literary critic. He contributed to the modernistavant-garde movement and is regarded as one of the most influential and important writers of the 20th century. He is best known for his short story collection Dubliners, and for his novels A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Ulysses and Finnegans Wake. Together with Virginia Woolf and Dorothy Richardson, he is credited with the development of the stream of consciousness technique in which the same weight is given to both the internal world of the mind and the external world of events and circumstances as factors shaping the actions and views of fictional characters. His fictional universe is firmly rooted in Dublin and reflects his family life and the events and friends and enemies from his school and college days. In this, he became both one of the most cosmopolitan and local of all the prominent English languagemodernists. (Full article...)
Prostate cancer is the uncontrolled growth of cells in the prostate. It is often detected through blood tests for prostate-specific antigen, followed by a biopsy. Most prostate tumors cause no health problems, and are managed with surveillance. Dangerous tumors can be surgically removed or destroyed with radiation therapy. Those whose cancer spreads receive hormone therapy, targeted therapy, and eventually chemotherapy. Most tumors are confined to the prostate, and 99% of men survive 10 years post-diagnosis. Those whose tumors have metastasized to distant body sites have a poorer prognosis; 30–40% are still alive five years after diagnosis. Each year 1.2 million men are diagnosed with prostate cancer and 350,000 die of the disease, making it the second-leading cause of cancer in men. Prostate tumors were first described in the mid-19th century. Hormone therapies were developed in the mid-20th century, resulting in Nobel Prizes for their developers Charles Huggins and Andrzej Schally. (Full article...)
1999 – Amadou Diallo, a 23-year-old immigrant from Guinea, was shot and killed by four New York City Police Department plain-clothed officers, prompting outrage both within and outside the city.
Civic reception for the Notts County team after their victory in the 2009–10 Football League Two
During the 2009–10 English football season, Notts County F.C. competed in Football League Two, the fourth tier of the English football league system. Shortly before the season began, the club was subject to a high-profile takeover by Munto Finance, which was controlled by a convicted fraudster. The club had been acquired as part of an elaborate scheme to list a fake mining company on the stock exchange. The scheme collapsed and Notts County was left deeply in debt. A further takeover prevented bankruptcy and saw the team winning the League Two championship and promotion to Football League One. The team also fared well in the FA Cup, reaching the last sixteen of the competition. The season saw four different owners, three permanent first-team managers and two spells of interim management. In total, the team played 54 competitive matches, winning 31, drawing 14 and losing nine. Notts County continued to experience off-field problems and the team were relegated to non-League football in 2019. (Full article...)
John Silva Meehan was an American publisher, printer, and newspaper editor. Born in New York City on February 6, 1790, he served in the US Navy during the War of 1812. He then moved to Philadelphia, publishing a Baptist religious journal. When the firm moved to Washington, D.C. in 1822, Meehan edited and published a Baptist weekly newspaper. In late 1825 he purchased the City of Washington Gazette, renaming it the United States' Telegraph and taking a partisan stance. He was appointed as librarian of Congress in 1828. A large fire in December 1851 destroyed much of the Library of Congress's collection; Meehan oversaw its reconstruction. The election of Abraham Lincoln prompted Meehan's removal in 1861, and he died suddenly in 1863. Historians were critical of Meehan's tenure, noting that he deferred to the Joint Committee on the Library for policy, did not change the library's catalog system, and failed to make progress in transforming the institution into a true national library. (Full article...)
1919 – More than 65,000 workers in Seattle began a five-day general strike to gain higher wages after two years of U.S. World War I wage controls.
1958 – The aircraft carrying the Manchester United football team crashed while attempting to take off from Munich-Riem Airport in West Germany, killing 8 players and 23 people in total (news reel featured).
The Japanese battleship Tosa (土佐) was a planned battleship of the Imperial Japanese Navy. Designed by Yuzuru Hiraga, Tosa was to be the first of two Tosa-class ships. Displacing 39,900-long-ton (40,540 t) and armed with ten 410 mm (16.1 in) guns, these warships would have brought Japan closer to its goal of an "Eight-four" fleet (eight battleships and four battlecruisers). Compared with earlier designs the ships would have had higher steaming speed despite increased tonnage, flush decks, and inclined armor. Tosa was ordered in 1918, laid down in February 1920 in Nagasaki and launched in December 1921. All work on the ship was halted in February 1922 after the Washington Naval Conference and the signing of the Washington Naval Treaty. As the vessel had to be destroyed in accordance with the terms of the treaty, it was subjected to various tests to gauge the effectiveness of Japanese weaponry before being scuttled on 9 February 1925.
(This article is part of a featured topic: Battleships of Japan.)
The siege of Baghdad took place in early 1258 when a large army under Hulegu, a prince of the Mongol Empire, attacked Baghdad, the capital of the Abbasid Caliphate. Hulegu had been sent by his brother, the Mongol khan Möngke, to conquer Persia. He expected Baghdad's ruler, Caliph al-Musta'sim, to reinforce his army, but this did not happen. Provoked by al-Musta'sim's arrogance, Hulegu decided to overthrow him. The Mongol army of over 138,000 men routed a sortie by flooding their camp, and besieged the city, which was left with around 30,000 troops. After Mongol siege engines breached Baghdad's walls, al-Musta'sim surrendered on 10 February, and was later executed. The Mongol army pillaged the city for a week; the number of deaths is unknown, but Hulegu estimated a total of 200,000. The siege, often seen as the end of the Islamic Golden Age, was in reality not era-defining: Baghdad later prospered under Hulegu's Ilkhanate. (Full article...)
On 20 December 2004, £26.5 million was stolen from the Northern Bank in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Having taken family members of two bank officials hostage, an armed gang forced the workers to help them steal banknotes. It was one of the largest bank robberies in the United Kingdom. The police and British and Irish governments claimed the Provisional Irish Republican Army was responsible, which was denied. Police forces made inquiries and arrests in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. A sum of £2.3 million was impounded from a financial adviser, Ted Cunningham, in County Cork; he was convicted in 2009. Chris Ward, one of the bank officials, was arrested in November 2005 and charged with robbery. The prosecution offered no evidence at trial and he was released. Northern Bank replaced its own bank notes. The robbery adversely affected the Northern Ireland peace process and hardened the relationship between the Taoiseach and Sinn Féin. Nobody has ever been held directly responsible for the robbery. (Full article...)
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