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Fran Drescher, who played Joy Miller

The Beautician and the Beast is a 1997 American romantic comedy film directed by Ken Kwapis and written by Todd Graff. It stars Fran Drescher (pictured) as a New York City beautician who is hired to tutor the children of a fictional Eastern European dictator, played by Timothy Dalton. The film takes inspiration from other stories like Beauty and the Beast, The King and I, Evita, and The Sound of Music. Produced by Drescher and Paramount Pictures, The Beautician and the Beast had Drescher's first starring role in a film. Filming took place in Greystone Mansion in Beverly Hills, California, and Sychrov Castle in the Czech Republic. Cliff Eidelman composed the soundtrack, which features the London Metropolitan Orchestra. Critics panned the story as more appropriate for a sitcom, and Drescher and Dalton received mixed reviews for their performances. The Beautician and the Beast was a box-office bomb, grossing roughly $11.5 million against a production budget of $16 million. (Full article...)

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Tiger of the 5th Combat Helicopter Regiment

... that a Eurocopter Tiger (example pictured) from the French Army's 5th Combat Helicopter Regiment was involved in the 2019 Ménaka helicopter crash that killed 13 people?
... that the International Vinegar Museum houses more than 350 types of vinegar from around the world?
... that the Royal Navy only withdrew cutlasses from combat service in 1936?
... that the population of Holmes County, Ohio, is approximately 50 percent Amish?
... that Finnish linguist Eeva Leinonen was one of four women to be inaugurated as heads of Irish universities in 2021, the others being Maggie Cusack, Linda Doyle and Kerstin Mey?
... that George Balanchine choreographed his ballet Sonatine for New York City Ballet's Ravel Festival, a tribute to its composer in his centenary year?
... that after being wiped by the BBC, all four episodes of the Doctor Who serial The Time Meddler were discovered in Nigeria in 1984?
... that HALO will orbit the Moon?

In the news

Cooper Kupp

In American football, the Los Angeles Rams defeat the Cincinnati Bengals in the Super Bowl (MVP Cooper Kupp pictured).
Cyclone Batsirai makes landfall in Madagascar, displacing at least 112,000 people and leaving more than 100 others dead.
In association football, the Africa Cup of Nations concludes with Senegal defeating Egypt in the final.
Indian playback singer and composer Lata Mangeshkar dies at the age of 92.

On this day

February 14: Valentine's Day

Great Ormond Street Hospital

1804 – Serb chieftans elected Đorđe Petrović as their leader, and began an uprising against the Ottoman Empire.
1852 – The Hospital for Sick Children (pictured), the first hospital in England to provide in-patient beds specifically for children, was founded in London.
1924 – The Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company was renamed to International Business Machines, which grew into one of the world's largest companies by market capitalization.
1989 – Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini of Iran issued a fatwa calling for the death of Salman Rushdie, the author of The Satanic Verses, a novel considered to be blasphemous by some Muslims.

Domenico Ferrabosco (b. 1513)
William Blackstone (d. 1780)
Adnan Saidi (d. 1942)

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From today's featured list

Robert Bathurst

The filmography of English actor Robert Bathurst comprises both film and television roles spanning 30 years. Bathurst made his acting debut for television in 1982 in "The Black Adder", the never-broadcast pilot episode for the BBC sitcom Blackadder, though his character of Prince Henry was recast when the series The Black Adder was commissioned. Into the 1990s, Bathurst gained wider recognition from television audiences, first as writer Mark Taylor in Joking Apart from 1991 to 1995, then as David Marsden in Cold Feet from 1997 to 2003 and again from 2016. In the early 2000s, Bathurst starred in a succession of one-off television dramas before taking the role of British prime minister Michael Phillips in the sitcom My Dad's the Prime Minister. Throughout the rest of the decade, he appeared in episodes of New Tricks, Agatha Christie's Poirot, and Kingdom, and played Mark Thatcher in Coup!, a fact-based drama. Alongside his television and film roles, Bathurst has developed a theatre career. He appeared in several Cambridge Footlights Revues between 1977 and 1981, and co-directed the 1978 Footlights pantomime with Martin Bergman. (Full list...)

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Today's featured picture

Historical coats of arms of the U.S. states date back to the admission of the first states to the Union. The historical coat of arms of Oregon shown here was illustrated by Henry Mitchell and published by Louis Prang in 1876 in The State Arms of the Union. Below the American eagle, the upper panel represents commerce, depicting mountains, an elk, a covered wagon, and the Pacific Ocean; in the ocean, a British man-of-war is departing and an American steamer is arriving, symbolizing the end of British rule in the Oregon Country. The lower panel shows a sheaf, a plow, and a pickaxe, symbolizing agriculture and mining.

Illustration credit: Henry Mitchell; restored by Andrew Shiva

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