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From yesterday's featured article

Zeng (right) with fellow imperial officials, 1872

Zeng Laishun (c. 1826 – 2 June 1895) was a Chinese interpreter and among the first Chinese students to study at a foreign college. Born in Singapore to a Malay mother and a Teochew father, he was orphaned at a young age, and educated at a Christian mission school. He was sent to the United States in 1843 and later attended Hamilton College for two years, before a lack of funding forced him to move to China. After a few years of mission work, he moved to Shanghai to become a businessman, and later an English teacher at an imperial naval school. In 1871, he was selected as a tutor and interpreter for the Chinese Educational Mission. Alongside Yung Wing, Chen Lanbin, his family, and the first cohort of students, he returned to the U.S. in 1872, staying in Springfield, Massachusetts. He went on speaking tours and was briefly dispatched to Cuba to investigate the abuses of the "coolie trade". He was recalled to China in 1874, and took up work as a secretary for statesman Li Hongzhang. (Full article...)

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Did you know ...

Sylvilagus aquaticus

... that the swamp rabbit (pictured) is both territorial and a great swimmer?
... that no other month in a calendar year starts with the same day of the week as June?
... that Samantha Kane led an unsuccessful takeover bid for Sheffield United F.C. and, after a gender transition, was interviewed to become its chief executive?
... that the first version of the Amtrak Susquehanna River Bridge was heavily damaged by a tornado during construction?
... that medicine dean Sjahriar Rasad was accused of being involved in a conspiracy to assassinate Indonesian president Sukarno?
... that the U.S. Supreme Court is currently deciding whether the family who lived in a house wrongly raided by the FBI may sue the government?
... that Romanian sports shooter Petre Cișmigiu demanded the elimination of a pension gap between Olympic and non-Olympic champions, such as himself?
... that the novel Looking Glass Girl was launched at Coventry Central Library to highlight the threat of 17 libraries in the city closing?
... that John P. Morris won a strike by hiding pigeons in fur coats?

In the news (For today)

Josep-Lluís Serrano Pentinat

Josep-Lluís Serrano Pentinat (pictured) is sworn in as the new episcopal co-prince of Andorra.
Kenyan writer and activist Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o dies at the age of 87.
Flooding submerges the town of Mokwa, Nigeria, leaving more than 200 people dead.
In sumo, Ōnosato Daiki is promoted to yokozuna.
In association football, Liverpool win the Premier League title.

On the previous day

June 2: Festa della Repubblica in Italy (1946); King's Official Birthday in New Zealand (2025); Western Australia Day (2025)

Luigi Galleani

1802 – Henry Hacking killed the Aboriginal Australian resistance fighter Pemulwuy after Philip Gidley King ordered that he be brought in dead or alive.
1919 – First Red Scare: The anarchist followers of Luigi Galleani (pictured) set off eight bombs in eight cities across the United States.
1953 – Queen Elizabeth II was crowned at Westminster Abbey in London.
1973 – Della Aleksander co-presented an episode of Open Door on transgender women's lives.
2023 – A collision between two passenger trains and a parked freight train near the city of Balasore, Odisha, in eastern India resulted in 296 deaths and more than 1,200 people injured.

Bernard of Wąbrzeźno (d. 1603)
William Salmon (b. 1644)
Gilbert Baker (b. 1951)
Radoje Pajović (d. 2019)

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From yesterday's featured list

Burledge Hillfort

There are numerous Iron Age hillforts and ancient settlements in Somerset, a ceremonial county in South West England. Somerset is a rural county of rolling hills, such as the Mendip Hills, the Quantock Hills and Exmoor National Park, and large flat expanses of land including the Somerset Levels. Some locations were later reused in the Dark Ages, such as Cadbury Castle, Worlebury Camp and Ham Hill. Other hillforts, such as Small Down Knoll, Solsbury Hill, Dolebury Warren and Burledge Hill (pictured), may have had a domestic purpose as well as a defensive role. In addition to the hillforts, several sites have been identified as settlements during the pre-Roman period, including Cambria Farm and the "Lake Villages" at Meare and Glastonbury, which were built on a morass, on an artificial foundation of timber filled with brushwood, bracken, rubble and clay. (Full list...)

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Yesterday's featured picture

The Battle of Diamond Rock was a naval battle that took place between 31 May and 2 June 1805 during the Trafalgar campaign of the War of the Third Coalition, part of the Napoleonic Wars. A Franco-Spanish force dispatched under Captain Julien Cosmao retook Diamond Rock, on the approach to Fort-de-France on the Caribbean island of Martinique, from the British forces that had occupied it more than a year before. This oil-on-canvas painting depicting the battle, titled Taking of the Rock Le Diamant, near Martinique, 2 June 1805, was painted in 1837 by Auguste Étienne François Mayer, and measures 80 cm (31.4 in) high and 128 cm (50.3 in) wide. The painting now hangs in the Palace of Versailles.

Painting credit: Auguste Étienne François Mayer

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