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From today's featured article

The Sirens and Ulysses is a very large oil painting by the English artist William Etty, first exhibited in 1837. It depicts the scene from Homer's Odyssey in which Ulysses (Odysseus) resists the bewitching song of the sirens by having his ship's crew tie him up, while they are ordered to block their own ears to prevent themselves from hearing the song. Traditionally sirens had been depicted as human–animal chimeras, but Etty portrayed them as naked young women on an island strewn with decaying corpses. The painting divided opinion, with some critics greatly admiring it while others derided it as tasteless and unpleasant. Following the 1857 Art Treasures Exhibition, it was removed from display for about 150 years. In 2010 the painting went on permanent display in the Manchester Art Gallery. (Full article...)

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Did you know ...

Two British slave-ships, painted by George Webster

... that George Webster painted two British slave-ships (pictured) taking onboard enslaved people from Fort Christiansborg?
... that the Cairo pentagonal tiling was a favorite pattern of M. C. Escher?
... that Hayat Bakshi Begum ruled the Golconda Sultanate as regent for her son Abdullah Qutb Shah?
... that the fungal pathogen Aschersonia aleyrodis can control silverleaf whitefly under greenhouse conditions?
... that Silas Farley rejected a Harvard University full scholarship to pursue a career in ballet?
... that the second volume of A Certain Magical Index was finished in only seventeen days?
... that Franz Harnoncourt became CEO of the Kastner & Öhler department store in Graz after working for Karstadt and Marks & Spencer, and beginning as sales person and storage worker?
... that Spain's win in the UEFA Euro 2008 Final was the first of three successive major tournament victories?

In the news

Yulimar Rojas

Venezuelan Yulimar Rojas (pictured) breaks a 26-year-old world record in the women's triple jump.
Wildfires in southern Turkey kill at least eight people and injure more than 800 others.
Flooding in western Maharashtra, India, results in more than 250 deaths.
Typhoon In-fa and resulting flash floods leave more than 300 people dead across China, Japan, and the Philippines.
The Saint Lucia Labour Party wins the general election, and Philip Pierre becomes prime minister.

On this day

August 2: Roma Holocaust Memorial Day

Krishna Lal Adhikari

216 BC – Second Punic War: Outnumbered Carthaginian forces led by Hannibal defeated a Roman army near the town of Cannae in southeastern Italy.
1790 – The first United States census was officially completed, with the nation's residential population enumerated to be 3,929,214.
1897 – The Siege of Malakand ended when a relief column was able to reach the British garrison in the Malakand region of colonial India's North West Frontier Province.
1920 – Nepalese author Krishna Lal Adhikari (pictured) was sentenced to nine years in prison for publishing a book about the cultivation of corn.

Ahudemmeh (d. 575)
Arthur Bliss (b. 1891)
Jean-Pierre Melville (d. 1973)

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Painting of the screw corvettes Stosch, Stein, and Gneisenau

From the 1860s to the 1880s, Prussia and later the German Empire built a series of screw corvettes to expand and modernize its fleet of cruising warships. In total, twenty-three screw corvettes were built, mostly between six different ship classes. The first two ships, of the Nymphe class, were built in the early 1860s as Prussia began to prepare for an eventual conflict with Denmark over the Schleswig-Holstein Question, though only Nymphe entered service in time for the Second Schleswig War in 1864. Nymphe was the only ship of the type to see action against an enemy warship, taking part in the Battle of Jasmund during the Second Schleswig War in 1864 and an attack on a blockading French squadron during the Franco-Prussian War in 1870. Augusta was activated during the Franco-Prussian War to raid French shipping in the Atlantic Ocean, capturing three ships carrying war materiel, two of which were taken as prizes and the third sunk. As the corvettes were replaced with newer vessels, beginning with several unprotected cruisers, they were frequently converted into training ships. (Full list...)

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Today's featured picture

Bertha Lutz (August 2, 1894 – September 16, 1976) was a Brazilian zoologist, politician, and diplomat. She became a leading figure in the Pan-American feminist and human rights movements, and was instrumental in gaining women's suffrage in Brazil. In addition to her political work, she was a naturalist at the National Museum of Brazil, specializing in poison dart frogs. Her collections were destroyed in September 2018, when a fire devastated most of the museum's collections.

Photograph credit: unknown; restored by Adam Cuerden

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