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From today's featured article

Japanese battleship Yamashiro

The Fusō-class battleships were a pair of dreadnoughts built for the Imperial Japanese Navy before and during World War I: Fusō was launched in 1914, and Yamashiro (pictured) in 1915. During the 1930s, both ships underwent a series of modernizations and reconstructions. This increased their armor, replaced and upgraded their machinery, and rebuilt their superstructures into a distinctive pagoda-mast style. Despite the expensive reconstructions, both vessels were considered obsolescent by the eve of World War II, and neither saw significant action in the early years of the war. In 1944 both underwent upgrades to their anti-aircraft suite before transferring to Singapore. Fusō and Yamashiro were the only two Japanese battleships at the Battle of Surigao Strait, the southernmost action of the Battle of Leyte Gulf, and both were lost in the early hours of 25 October 1944 to torpedoes and naval gunfire. Only ten crewmembers from each ship survived. (This article is part of a featured topic: Battleships of Japan.)

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Did you know ...

Anna Haifisch

... that cartoonist Anna Haifisch (pictured) has been "bend[ing] the rules of comics"?
... that MyRadar uses a custom satellite constellation to help forecast the weather?
... that the early woman explorer Adèle de Dombasle travelled to Polynesia in 1847 and worked as an illustrator, drawing people such as Queen Pōmare IV?
... that song lyrics were allowed as evidence in the YSL Records racketeering trial?
... that imprisoned Afghan politician Abdur Rahman Mahmudi wrote poems using onion juice as ink in his prison cell?
... that part of the site of Granville Colliery is now used as a dry ski slope?
... that the parents of Mathias Nkwenti, the second Cameroonian ever to play in the NFL, initially opposed his football career?
... that a small golden bell found at the site of the Mount Gerizim Temple is believed to have been part of the ephod of a high priest, as described in Exodus 28?
... that because the lord chancellor of England did not freeze assets before trial in 1789, the U.S. Supreme Court decided in 1999 that U.S. courts cannot either?

In the news

Gustavo Gutiérrez

Peruvian Catholic theologian Gustavo Gutiérrez (pictured), a founder of Latin American liberation theology, dies at the age of 96.
Moldova votes to amend its constitution to include the aim of becoming a European Union member state.
Yahya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas, is killed in a firefight with Israeli forces in Gaza.
The Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences is awarded to Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson, and James A. Robinson for their comparative studies of prosperity between nations.

On this day

October 25

Charge of the Light Brigade

1616 – Dutch explorer Dirk Hartog left a plate on an island in Shark Bay, the oldest-known artefact of European exploration in Australia still in existence.
1854 – Crimean War: The ill-fated Charge of the Light Brigade (pictured) was decisively repelled by Russian forces during the Battle of Balaclava.
1950 – The People's Volunteer Army ambushed the South Korean II Corps at the Battle of Onjong, and elsewhere engaged the 1st Infantry Division at the Battle of Unsan, marking China's entry into the Korean War.
2001 – Windows XP, one of the most popular and widely used versions of the Microsoft Windows operating system, was released for retail sale.
2022 – At 49 days, Liz Truss concluded the shortest tenure as prime minister of the United Kingdom.

Catherine of Bosnia (d. 1478)
Évariste Galois (b. 1811)
Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti (b. 1900)
Katy Perry (b. 1984)

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From today's featured list

Quintonil

The Michelin Guide debuted in Mexico in 2024. The guides have been published by the French tire company Michelin since 1900. They were designed as a guide to tell drivers about eateries they recommended to visit and to subtly sponsor their tires, by encouraging drivers to use their cars more and therefore need to replace the tires as they wore out. Over time, the stars that were given out started to become more valuable. Inspectors visited five states – Baja California, Baja California Sur, Nuevo León, Oaxaca and Quintana Roo – and the capital city, Mexico City. Sixteen restaurants earned one star, and two, Pujol and Quintonil (pictured), received two. No restaurant earned three stars. (Full list...)

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Today's featured picture

USS Johnston was a Fletcher-class destroyer built for the United States Navy during World War II. She was named after Lieutenant John V. Johnston, a navy officer during the American Civil War. The ship was laid down in May 1942 and was launched in March 1943, entering active duty later that year as part of the US Pacific Fleet. Johnston provided naval gunfire support for American ground forces during the Gilbert and Marshall Islands campaign in 1944 and again, after three months of patrol and escort duty in the Solomon Islands, during the recapture of Guam in July. Thereafter, Johnston was tasked with escorting escort carriers during the Mariana and Palau Islands campaign and the liberation of the Philippines. On 25 October 1944, Johnston and various other ships were engaged by a large Imperial Japanese Navy flotilla, in what became known as the Battle off Samar. After engaging several Japanese capital ships and a destroyer squadron, Johnston was sunk with 187 dead. Johnston's wreck was discovered in 2019, and at a depth of more than 20,000 feet (6,100 m) below the surface, is one of the deepest shipwrecks ever surveyed. This photograph shows Johnston in Seattle in October 1943.

Photograph credit: uidentified US Navy photographer; restored by Adam Cuerden and Cobatfor

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