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Kurt Vonnegut (1922–2007) was an American writer. In a career spanning over 50 years, he published fourteen novels and three short story collections; further works were published after his death. Born and raised in Indianapolis, Vonnegut enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1943. Deployed to Europe to fight in World War II, he was captured by the Germans and interned in Dresden, where he survived the Allied bombing of the city in a slaughterhouse. Vonnegut published his first novel, Player Piano, in 1952. Two of his novels, The Sirens of Titan (1959) and Cat's Cradle (1963), were nominated for the Hugo Award. Slaughterhouse-Five (1969), a best-seller that resonated with its readers for its anti-war sentiment amidst the ongoing Vietnam War, thrust Vonnegut into fame as an important contemporary writer and a dark humor commentator on American society. Numerous scholarly works have examined Vonnegut's writing and humor. (Full article...)

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Did you know ...

Game Boy Color connected to a cell phone via an adapter

... that the Japanese version of Pokémon Crystal allowed players to trade and battle over mobile networks using an adapter (pictured)?
... that Jacques Loew started the worker-priest movement after working as a longshoreman and realizing the distance between the priesthood and the working class?
... that Barcelona Femení were unbeaten in their first season in 1971 when their captain announced that she would leave football?
... that Thomas Young, a professor of midwifery, was taken prisoner at the Battle of Prestonpans?
... that Giorgio Moroder co-wrote and recorded a poem about seduction in Italian for Kylie and Garibay's self-titled EP?
... that Australia-born rugby union player Jason Jones-Hughes was the subject of a protracted legal battle over his international eligibility after Wales called him up for the 1999 Rugby World Cup?
... that 28 Jews hid in Verteba Cave for almost six months during the Holocaust?
... that Joseph Drummond, a key figure of New Brunswick's branch of the NAACP, staged a sit-in at a local barbershop whose owner proclaimed that he had "never cut a colored person's hair in 55 years"?
... that 1 + 1 = 1, according to some forms of non-Diophantine arithmetic?

In the news

Peter Higgs

Nobel Prize–winning theoretical physicist Peter Higgs (pictured) dies at the age of 94.
A total solar eclipse appears across parts of North America.
In NCAA Division I basketball, the South Carolina Gamecocks win the women's championship and the UConn Huskies win the men's championship.
Mexico breaks diplomatic relations with Ecuador in response to Ecuadorian police forcibly entering the Mexican embassy in Quito.
A 7.4-magnitude earthquake strikes near Hualien City, Taiwan.

On this day

April 11

Mary II and William III

1689 – William III and Mary II (both pictured) were crowned joint sovereigns of England in a ceremony at Westminster Abbey.
1809 – Napoleonic Wars: A hastily assembled Royal Navy fleet launched an assault against the main strength of the French Atlantic Fleet; an incomplete victory led to political turmoil in Britain.
1951 – U.S. president Harry S. Truman relieved General of the Army Douglas MacArthur of his commands for making public statements about the Korean War that contradicted the administration's policies.
1973 – On the Art of the Cinema, a treatise on film propaganda in support of the ruling Workers' Party of Korea written by the future North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, was published.
2001 – In a FIFA World Cup qualifying match, Australia defeated American Samoa 31–0, the largest margin of victory recorded in international football.

Romanos III Argyros (d. 1034)
Ewelina Hańska (d. 1882)
Kurt Vonnegut (d. 2007)

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Today's featured picture

The Maison carrée (French for 'square house') is an ancient Roman temple in Nîmes, southern France. It is a mid-sized Augustan provincial temple of the imperial cult, and one of the best-preserved Roman temples to survive in the territory of the former Roman Empire. Built in the early 1st century AD, it was dedicated or rededicated to Gaius and Lucius Caesar, grandsons and adopted heirs of Augustus, who both died young. The Maison carrée is similar to a Tuscan-style Roman temple as described in the writings of Vitruvius, a contemporary Roman writer on architecture. It has undergone several restorations over the centuries and was inscribed on the UNESCO list of World Heritage Sites in 2023. This photograph of the Maison carrée at evening was taken in 2019.

Photograph credit: Krzysztof Golik

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