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From today's featured article

Denarius with a reverse depicting Metellus's triumph

The Battle of Panormus was fought on Sicily in 250 BC during the First Punic War between a Roman army led by Lucius Caecilius Metellus and a Carthaginian force led by Hasdrubal. The Romans captured the major Sicilian city of Panormus in 254 BC. Thereafter they avoided battle for fear of the Carthaginian war elephants. In 250 BC Hasdrubal led out his army to devastate the crops of Rome's allied cities. The Romans withdrew to Panormus and Hasdrubal pressed on to the city walls. Once he arrived, Metellus countered the elephants with a hail of javelins from earthworks dug near the walls. Infuriated by this missile fire, the elephants fled through the Carthaginian infantry. The Roman infantry then charged the Carthaginian left flank, which broke, along with the rest of the Carthaginians. The elephants were captured and later slaughtered in the Circus Maximus (commemorative coin pictured). This was the last significant land battle of the war, which ended nine years later in a Roman victory. (Full article...)

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In the news

Desmond Tutu

South African archbishop and human rights activist Desmond Tutu (pictured) dies at the age of 90.
Ariane flight VA256, carrying the James Webb Space Telescope, is launched from the Guiana Space Centre.
A ferry fire in Bangladesh kills at least 40 people.
Floods in Malaysia leave at least 46 people dead and displace more than 68,000 others.
At least 85 people are killed in a shipwreck off the coast of Madagascar.

On this day

December 26: Boxing Day in the Commonwealth; Kwanzaa begins (African diaspora in the Americas)

Flamingo Las Vegas

1871 – Thespis, the first comic opera by Gilbert and Sullivan, premiered at the Gaiety Theatre in London.
1946 – American gangster Bugsy Siegel opened The Flamingo Hotel & Casino (pictured) in Las Vegas, the oldest casino still in operation on the Las Vegas Strip.
1996 – The Federation of Korean Trade Unions called on its 1.2 million members to refuse to work, beginning the largest organized strike in South Korean history.
2006 – Two earthquakes occurring off the southwest coast of Taiwan damaged submarine communications cables, disrupting Internet services in Asia and seriously affecting financial transactions.

John Page (bapt. 1628)
Friedrich Melchior, Baron von Grimm (b. 1723)
Dorothy Bliss (d. 1987)

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Today's featured picture

Santo Stanislao dei Polacchi is a Catholic church in Rome, Italy, situated on Via delle Botteghe Oscure in the rione of Sant'Angelo. It is the national church of Poland in Rome and is dedicated to Saint Stanislaus of Szczepanów. The ceiling of its single nave is decorated with this painting by Ermenegildo Costantini, entitled The Glory of Saint Stanislaus.

Painting credit: Ermenegildo Costantini; photographed by Livioandronico

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