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From today's featured article

The Byzantine Empire, sometimes referred to as the Eastern Roman Empire, was the continuation of the Roman Empire in the East during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, when its capital city was Constantinople (modern-day Istanbul, originally founded as Byzantium). It survived the fragmentation and fall of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century AD and continued to exist for an additional thousand years until it fell to the Ottoman Turks in 1453. During most of its existence, the empire was the most powerful economic, cultural, and military force in Europe. Both "Byzantine Empire" and "Eastern Roman Empire" are historiographical terms created after the end of the realm; its citizens continued to refer to their empire as the Roman Empire (Ancient Greek: Βασιλεία τῶν Ῥωμαίων, tr. Basileia tôn Rhōmaiōn; Latin: Imperium Romanum), or Romania (Ῥωμανία), and to themselves as "Romans." (Full article...)

Did you know...

• ... that the Battle of Hampton Roads was perhaps the most important naval battle of the American Civil War from the standpoint of the development of navies?
• ... that the type fossil of the damselfly Electropodagrion consists only of a thorax, leg, and wing portions?
• ... that Emma Dench, a British classicist and the McLean Professor of Ancient and Modern History at Harvard University, appeared in a film alongside her aunt Judi Dench in 1968?
• ... that the Drudge Report had ten billion visits in the past year?
• ... that Istanbul was formerly known as Constantinople and before 324AD was known as Byzantium?
• ... that the Sacred Heart Church in Exeter, England is the earliest surviving architectural work of Leonard Stokes?
• ... that NuScale Power has designed a line of small, modular nuclear reactors?

In the news (from Infogalactic News)

• After Thousands Of Parents Refused To Comply Another CA School District Vax Mandate Falls
  Judge Ruled Schools Have No Authority To Mandate Medical Procedures For Children
• Ghislaine Maxwell Found Guilty of 5 Of 6 Charges
  Will She Be Epsteined?
• Aaron Rodgers: "If Science Can't Be Questioned, It's Not Science Anymore"
  "It's Propoganda"
  

• Jake Tapper's Producer Resigns From CNN
  Amid Pedo Scandal
• Israel Orders 100 Million Eggs Due To Bird Flu Outbreak
  Eggs And Hens Must Be Destroyed To Contain The Outbreak
• Twitter Suspends mRNA Tech Inventor Dr. Robert Malone
  Ran Counter To Covid Narrative
• Life Expectancy In 2020 Fell 2.3% To 77 Years
  Does This Justify The Covid Panic?
  

On this day...

May 25

• 1935 – Jesse Owens of Ohio State University breaks three world records and ties a fourth at the Big Ten Conference Track and Field Championships in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
• 1979 – Etan Patz, who is six years old, disappears from the street just two blocks away from his home in New York City, prompting an international search for the child, and causing the U.S. President Ronald Reagan to designate May 25 as National Missing Children's Day (in 1983).
• 1999 – The United States House of Representatives releases the Cox Report which details the People's Republic of China's nuclear espionage against the U.S. over the prior two decades.
• 2002 – China Airlines Flight 611 disintegrates in mid-air and crashes into the Taiwan Strait. All 225 people on board are killed.
• 2011 – Oprah Winfrey airs her last show, ending her twenty-five-year run of The Oprah Winfrey Show.
• 2012 – The Dragon became the first commercial spacecraft to successfully rendezvous with the International Space Station.
• 2013 – A gas cylinder explodes on a school bus in the Pakistani city of Gujrat, killing at least 18 people.

• More anniversaries:
  • May 24
  • May 25
  • May 26

May 26

• 1293 – An earthquake strikes Kamakura, Kanagawa, Japan, killing about 30,000.
• 1538 – Geneva expels John Calvin and his followers from the city. Calvin lives in exile in Strasbourg for the next three years.
• 1573 – The Battle of Haarlemmermeer, a naval engagement in the Dutch War of Independence.
• 1822 – One hundred sixteen people die in the Grue Church fire, the biggest fire disaster in Norway's history.
• 1923 – The first 24 Hours of Le Mans was held and has since been run annually in June.
• 1991 – Zviad Gamsakhurdia becomes the first elected President of the Republic of Georgia in the post-Soviet era.
• 1991 – Lauda Air Flight 004, a Boeing 767, crashes in an area of western Thailand after a thrust reverser malfunction. All 223 people aboard are killed.

• More anniversaries:
  • May 25
  • May 26
  • May 27

• 1874 – The first group of Dorsland trekkers under the leadership of Gert Alberts leaves Pretoria.
• 1927 – The Ford Motor Company ceases manufacture of the Ford Model T and begins to retool plants to make the Ford Model A.
• 1930 – The 1,046 feet (319 m) Chrysler Building in New York City, the tallest man-made structure at the time, opens to the public.
• 1942 – World War II: In Operation Anthropoid, Reinhard Heydrich is fatally wounded in Prague; he dies of his injuries eight days later.
• 1967 – Australians vote in favor of a constitutional referendum granting the Australian government the power to make laws to benefit Indigenous Australians and to count them in the national census.
• 1967 – The U.S. Navy aircraft carrier USS John F. Kennedy is launched by Jacqueline Kennedy and her daughter Caroline.
• 1997 – The unusual tornado outbreak in Jarrell, Texas.

• More anniversaries:
  • May 26
  • May 27
  • May 28

Today's featured picture

The Painter of Sunflowers (in French: Le Peintre de Tournesols) is a portrait of Vincent van Gogh by Paul Gauguin in December 1888. The portrait was painted when Gauguin visited in Arles. Van Gogh had asked him to come to Arles, because he wanted to start an art-colony there. Gauguin however only stayed for two months, because the painters argued. (Full article...)

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