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From the day before yesterday's featured article

Sir William Gordon-Cumming (20 July 1848 – 20 May 1930) was a Scottish landowner, soldier and socialite. He was the central figure in the royal baccarat scandal of 1891. He joined the British Army in 1868 and saw service in South Africa, Egypt and the Sudan; he served with distinction and rose to the rank of lieutenant-colonel. An adventurer, he also hunted in the US and India. A friend of Edward, Prince of Wales, for over 20 years, in 1890 he attended a house party at Tranby Croft, where he took part in a game of baccarat at the behest of the prince. During the course of two nights' play he was accused of cheating, which he denied. After news of the affair leaked out, he sued five members of the party for slander; Edward was called as a witness. The case was a public spectacle in the UK and abroad, but the verdict went against Gordon-Cumming and he was ostracised from polite society. After the court case he married an American heiress, but their relationship was unhappy. (Full article...)

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Did you know ...

Ennis House

... that the Ennis House (pictured) was variously characterized as "a mausoleum, fortress, Tibetan monument, Mayan temple, and palace"?
... that, in 12th-century Igodomigodo, King Ohuede proposed allowing women to inherit the throne in the absence of male heirs?
... that one Japanese bullet train service once skipped the cities of Nagoya and Kyoto?
... that, when five consecutive Ranger spacecraft failed, Harris Schurmeier was put in charge with a mandate to transform the program?
... that Here Will I Nest was the first dramatic Canadian feature film to be shot in colour, and the first film adaptation of a Canadian play?
... that Prescott Currier was one of the first Americans to visit the British code-breaking centre at Bletchley Park?
... that Elyn Saks's memoir about her life with schizophrenia won her a "Genius Grant"?
... that the subculture of Aristasia combined Guénonian Traditionalism with lesbian separatism?
... that fencer Bernardo de la Guardia was a competitor and a judge – at the same Olympic Games?

In the news (For today)

Connie Francis

A fighter jet crashes into a college in Dhaka, Bangladesh, killing at least 25 people.
A tourist boat capsizes during a thunderstorm in Hạ Long Bay, Vietnam, leaving at least 36 people dead.
American singer Connie Francis (pictured), the first woman to reach the top of the Billboard Hot 100, dies at the age of 87.
A fire at a shopping mall in Kut, Wasit Governorate, Iraq, kills at least 69 people.

Two days ago

July 20

Forensic experts at the site of the Suruç bombing

1807 – French brothers Claude and Nicéphore Niépce received a patent for their Pyréolophore, one of the world's first internal combustion engines.
1951 – Abdullah I of Jordan was assassinated while visiting the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem.
1976 – The Viking 1 lander became the first spacecraft to successfully land on Mars and perform its mission.
1997 – USS Constitution, one of the United States Navy's original six frigates, sailed for the first time in 116 years after a full restoration.
2015 – A suicide attack (aftermath pictured) in Suruç, Turkey, for which Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) claimed responsibility, killed 34 people and injured 104 others.

Alexander the Great (b. 356 BC)
Amanda Clement (d. 1971)
Bruce Lee (d. 1973)
Gisele Bündchen (b. 1980)

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The day before yesterday's featured picture

C/2022 E3 (ZTF) is a non-periodic comet from the Oort cloud that was discovered by the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF) in 2022. With a comet nucleus of around 1 kilometre (0.6 mi) in diameter, C/2022 E3 rotates on its axis once every 8.5 to 8.7 hours. Its tails of dust and gas extended for millions of kilometers and, during January 2023, an anti-tail was also visible. The comet reached its most recent perihelion in January 2023, at a distance of 1.11 AU (166 million km; 103 million mi) from the sun, and the closest approach to Earth was a few weeks later, at a distance of 0.28 AU (42 million km; 26 million mi). The comet reached magnitude 5 and was visible with the naked eye under moonless dark skies. This photograph of C/2022 E3 was taken in January 2023 and released by the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics.

Photograph credit: Alessandro Bianconi; National Institute for Astrophysics

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