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Specimen at World Museum, Liverpool

The white swamphen (Porphyrio albus) was a rail found on Lord Howe Island, east of the Australian mainland. All contemporary accounts and illustrations were produced between 1788 and 1790, when the bird was first encountered by British ship crews. Today, two specimens exist: one in World Museum (pictured) in Liverpool, England, and the holotype in the Natural History Museum of Vienna. It is thought to have been most similar to the Australasian swamphen. The white swamphen was 36 to 55 cm (14 to 22 in) long. Contemporary accounts indicate that individual bird plumage was white, blue, or mixed blue-and-white. The bird's bill, frontal shield and legs were red, and it had a claw (or spur) on its wing. It was probably either flightless or a poor flier; this and its docility made the bird easy prey for visiting humans, who killed it with sticks. Reportedly once common, the species may have been hunted to extinction before 1834, when Lord Howe Island was settled. (Full article...)

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In the news

Elizabeth II

In Nigeria, at least 50 people are killed in an attack at a Catholic church in Owo, Ondo State.
A fire and explosions at a storage depot in Sitakunda, Bangladesh, kill at least 41 people and injure more than 450 others.
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Denmark votes to eliminate its opt-out of the European Union's Common Security and Defence Policy.

On this day

June 8

Margaret Bondfield

218 – Led by the inexperienced Gannys, Elagabalus's legions defeated the forces of Roman emperor Macrinus at the Battle of Antioch.
1826 – In York, Upper Canada, members of the Family Compact destroyed William Lyon Mackenzie's printing press in the Types Riot after Mackenzie accused them of corruption.
1929 – Margaret Bondfield (pictured) became the first female member of the Cabinet of the United Kingdom when she was named Minister of Labour by Ramsay MacDonald.
1972 – Vietnam War: Associated Press photographer Nick Ut took a Pulitzer Prize–winning photograph of a naked nine-year-old Phan Thi Kim Phuc fleeing after being burned by napalm.
1982 – Falklands War: The Argentine Air Force attacked British transport ships while unloading supplies off Bluff Cove in the Falkland Islands, killing 56 British servicemen and wounding 150 others.

Harthacnut (d. 1042)
Lucy Arbell (b. 1878)
Irina Lăzăreanu (b. 1982)

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Today's featured picture

Robert Bruce is an 1846 pastiche opera in three acts, with music by Gioachino Rossini and Louis Niedermeyer to a French-language libretto by Alphonse Royer and Gustave Vaëz, after Sir Walter Scott's History of Scotland. The music was stitched together by Niedermeyer, with the composer's permission, with pieces from La donna del lago, Zelmira, and other Rossini operas. The work was premiered on 30 December 1846 by the Paris Opera at the Salle Le Peletier. This illustration is the set for act 3 of the opera, taking place in the ramparts of Stirling Castle, designed by Charles-Antoine Cambon.

Set design credit: Charles-Antoine Cambon; restored by Adam Cuerden

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