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The England team celebrating a win earlier in the World Cup

The 2009 Women's Cricket World Cup Final was a Women's One Day International cricket match between England (pictured) and New Zealand, played on 22 March at the North Sydney Oval in Australia. It was the second time that the two teams had met at this stage of a World Cup – England had won their previous final contest in 1993. This game was the culmination of the 2009 Women's Cricket World Cup, the ninth edition of the tournament. England, who were considered the favourites, built an opening partnership of 74 runs and continued to score steadily. Despite regularly losing wickets, they won by four wickets with 23 balls to spare. This World Cup title was their first in 16 years, their third overall, and their first outside England. Nicky Shaw, a bowler who replaced the injured Jenny Gunn in England's starting lineup minutes before the game started, took a career-best four wickets for 34 runs and was named the player of the match. (Full article...)

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In the news

Men's Boat Race finish

In rowing, Oxford win the men's event (finish pictured) and Cambridge win the women's event in The Boat Race.
Jack Dongarra wins the Turing Award for his contributions to high-performance computing.
Scientists announce the discovery of Earendel, the farthest known individual star at 12.9 billion light-years away from Earth.
CODA wins Best Picture and Dune wins in six categories at the Academy Awards.

On this day

April 3

Oscar Wilde

1860 – The Pony Express, a mail service that became the most direct means of long-distance communication across the United States before the first transcontinental telegraph, began operation.
1895 – The libel trial instigated by Irish author Oscar Wilde (pictured) began, eventually resulting in his arrest, trial and imprisonment on charges of gross indecency.
1922 – Joseph Stalin became the first general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
1948 – Division of Korea: A communist uprising began on Jeju Island, eventually leading to thousands of deaths and atrocities committed by both sides.
2016 – The first news stories on the Panama Papers were published, revealing that shell corporations represented by the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca had been used for illegal purposes.

George Herbert (b. 1593)
Ernst Chladni (d. 1827)
SethBling (b. 1987)

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Today's featured picture

The African emerald cuckoo (Chrysococcyx cupreus) is a species of cuckoo that is found across much of sub-Saharan Africa. The species is sexually dimorphic: the male has a green back and head with a yellow breast, while the female is barred green and brown on the back and green and white on the breast. This male of the subspecies C. c. cupreus was photographed in Kakum National Park, Ghana.

Photograph credit: Charles James Sharp

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