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From today's featured article

The blue whale (Balaenoptera musculus) is a marine mammal belonging to the baleen whales (Mysticeti). At 30 metres (98 ft) in length and 180 tonnes (200 short tons) or more in weight, it is the largest extant animal and is the heaviest known to have existed.

Long and slender, the blue whale's body can be various shades of bluish-grey dorsally and somewhat lighter underneath. There are at least three distinct subspecies: B. m. musculus of the North Atlantic and North Pacific, B. m. intermedia of the Southern Ocean and B. m. brevicauda (also known as the pygmy blue whale) found in the Indian Ocean and South Pacific Ocean. B. m. indica, found in the Indian Ocean, may be another subspecies. As with other baleen whales, its diet consists almost exclusively of small crustaceans known as krill.

Blue whales were abundant in nearly all the oceans on Earth until the beginning of the twentieth century. For over a century, they were hunted almost to extinction by whalers until protected (Full article...)

Did you know...

• ... that the type fossil of the damselfly Electropodagrion consists only of a thorax, leg, and wing portions?
• ... that the Drudge Report had ten billion visits in the past year?
• ... that Buzzfeed printed fake news about President Trump?
• ... that Ida Silverman logged over 600,000 air miles traveling the world, speaking and fund-raising for the creation of a Jewish state?
• ... that the Sacred Heart Church in Exeter, England is the earliest surviving architectural work of Leonard Stokes?
• ... 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 President of the US, the Supreme Court and Congress are three significant branches of the US Government?

In the news (from Infogalactic News)

• Senile Fraud President Attacks Georgia Voting Security Laws
  Geriatric Child Sniffer Says Election Safety Is... Get This... 'Racist'
  

• GOP Losers Hold Presser On Biden Border Crisis
  Chumps Who Fought The Wall Suddenly Concerned About Invasion 
• U.S. Sec Of State To NATO: Russia Using "Disinformation" To Erode Trust In Vaccines
  More Russia, Russia, Russia
  

• Deadly Crackdown Kills Dozens In Myanmar
  Locals Defied Government Warnings To Protest
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• Dangerous Asteroid Poses No Threat For Century
• Cuomo Ordered Health Dept To Prioritize Family Members And Allies
  For COVID Testing
• U.S. Continues to Smuggle Oil
  While Turkey Complains To Russia It Can't
  

On this day...

March 27

• 1884 – A mob in Cincinnati, Ohio, attacks members of a jury which had returned a verdict of manslaughter in what was seen as a clear case of murder; over the next few days the mob would riot and eventually destroy the courthouse.
• 1899 – Emilio Aguinaldo leads Filipino forces for the only time during the Philippine–American War at the Battle of Marilao River.
• 1945 – World War II: Operation Starvation, the aerial mining of Japan's ports and waterways begins. Argentina declares war on the Axis Powers.
• 1975 – Construction of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System begins.
• 1977 – Tenerife airport disaster: Two Boeing 747 airliners collide on a foggy runway on Tenerife in the Canary Islands, killing 583 (all 248 on KLM and 335 on Pan Am). Sixty-one survived on the Pan Am flight. This is the worst aviation accident in history.
• 1980 – The Norwegian oil platform Alexander L. Kielland collapses in the North Sea, killing 123 of its crew of 212.
• 2016 – A suicide blast in Gulshan-e-Iqbal Park, Lahore claims over 70 lives and leaves almost 300 others injured. The target of the bombing are Christians celebrating Easter.

• More anniversaries:
  • March 26
  • March 27
  • March 28

March 28

• 1802 – Heinrich Wilhelm Matthäus Olbers discovers 2 Pallas, the second asteroid known to man.
• 1854 – Crimean War: France and Britain declare war on Russia.
• 1910 – Henri Fabre becomes the first person to fly a seaplane, the Fabre Hydravion, after taking off from a water runway near Martigues, France.
• 1959 – The State Council of the People's Republic of China dissolves the government of Tibet.
• 1979 – A coolant leak at the Three Mile Island's Unit 2 nuclear reactor outside Harrisburg, Pennsylvania leads to the core overheating and a partial meltdown.
• 2000 – Three children are killed when a Murray County, Georgia, school bus is hit by a CSX freight train.
• 2006 – At least one million union members, students, and unemployed take to the streets in France in protest at the government's proposed First Employment Contract law.

• More anniversaries:
  • March 27
  • March 28
  • March 29

• 1683 – Yaoya Oshichi, 15-year-old Japanese girl, burnt at the stake for an act of arson committed due to unrequited love.
• 1809 – King Gustav IV Adolf of Sweden abdicates after a coup d'état. At the Diet of Porvoo, Finland's four Estates pledge allegiance to Alexander I of Russia, commencing the secession of the Grand Duchy of Finland from Sweden.
• 1849 – The United Kingdom annexes the Punjab.
• 1945 – World War II: The German 4th Army is almost destroyed by the Soviet Red Army.
• 1973 – Vietnam War: The last United States combat soldiers leave South Vietnam.
• 1999 – A magnitude 6.8 earthquake strikes the Chamoli district in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, killing 103.
• 2002 – In reaction to the Passover massacre two days prior, Israel launches Operation Defensive Shield against Palestinian militants, its largest military operation in the West Bank since the 1967 Six-Day War.

• More anniversaries:
  • March 28
  • March 29
  • March 30

Today's featured picture

Donatello was the son of Niccolò di Betto Bardi, who was a member of the Florentine Wool Combers Guild, and was born in Florence, most likely in the year 1386. Donatello was educated in the house of the Martelli family. He apparently received his early artistic training in a goldsmith's workshop, and then worked briefly in the studio of Lorenzo Ghiberti.

In 1409–1411 Donatello executed the colossal seated figure of Saint John the Evangelist, which until 1588 occupied a niche of the old cathedral façade, and is now placed in the Museo dell'Opera del Duomo. This work marks a decisive step forward from late Gothic Mannerism in the search for naturalism and the rendering of human feelings. The face, the shoulders and the bust are still idealized, while the hands and the fold of cloth over the legs are more realistic. (Full article...)

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