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From today's featured article

Professed Cookery title page, 1760

Ann Cook (fl. c. 1725 – c. 1760) was an English cookery book writer and innkeeper. In 1754 she published Professed Cookery (pictured), which went on to two further editions in her lifetime. In 1739–1740 Cook and her husband John became embroiled in a feud with a well-connected local landowner, Sir Lancelot Allgood, following an argument over an invoice the Cooks had issued. Although they were later exonerated, Allgood continued his attack on them, forcing them to leave their inn. To earn money, Cook wrote The New System of Cookery in 1753, which was reissued as Professed Cookery in 1754. In the work, in addition to a range of recipes, she included a poem and an "Essay upon the Lady's Art of Cookery". This was an attack on Allgood's half-sister Hannah Glasse, who had published a best-selling cookery book, The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy, in 1747. The second and third editions of Professed Cookery include a critical analysis of Glasse's work, traditional English recipes and an essay on household management. (Full article...)

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Did you know ...

Animal Crackers

... that the 1930 Marx Brothers film Animal Crackers (complete film featured) entered the public domain in the United States on January 1, 2026?
... that Jane Rigby was too short to become an astronaut, so she became an astronomer instead?
... that the ownership of Lucian Freud's portrait of Queen Elizabeth II is unclear?
... that electrical engineer Emilija Soklič lived to see a mixing console she built become a museum piece?
... that by 2013 the Auto-Vue was eastern Washington's last operating drive-in theater?
... that milk tokens were introduced to reduce the theft of milk payments?
... that Eric Gilbertson's goal is to climb the high point of every country in the world?
... that the Pacific molly easily hybridizes with the common molly in the laboratory, but for some reason tends not to in nature?
... that an NFL player who played strip poker with nurses, a human rights lawyer who founded a Swiss assisted suicide clinic, and a businessman who denounced his old football playing style all had the nickname "Dr. Death"?

In the news

Sparkasse in Gelsenkirchen-Buer

A fire at a bar during New Year's Eve celebrations in Crans-Montana, Switzerland, kills at least 40 people.
Bulgaria adopts the euro, becoming the 21st member of the eurozone.
Former prime minister of Bangladesh Khaleda Zia dies at a hospital in Dhaka.
In Iran, a series of mass demonstrations occur in response to worsening economic conditions.
€30 million worth of items are stolen from a bank (building pictured) in Gelsenkirchen, Germany.

On this day

January 2: Feast day of Saint Gregory of Nazianzus and Saint Basil of Caesarea (Roman Rite Catholicism, Anglicanism)

Llandaff Cathedral

533 – Mercurius, a Roman priest, was elected Pope John II; he was apparently the first pope to adopt a new name upon elevation to the papacy.
1680 – Trunajaya rebellion: Amangkurat II of Mataram of Java and his courtiers stabbed Trunajaya to death a week after the rebel leader surrendered to VOC forces.
1941 – Second World War: Llandaff Cathedral (pictured) in Cardiff, Wales, was severely damaged by German bombing during the Cardiff Blitz.
1976 – An extratropical cyclone began affecting parts of western Europe, resulting in coastal flooding around the southern portions of the North Sea and leading to at least 82 deaths.
2024 – While landing at Haneda Airport, Japan Airlines Flight 516 collided with a De Havilland Canada Dash 8 which killed five people in total.

William de St-Calais (d. 1096)
Tex Rickard (b. 1870)
Lynn Conway (b. 1938)
Dnyaneshwar Agashe (d. 2009)

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From today's featured list

1957 performance of Puccini's opera Manon Lescaut

There have been many adaptations of the French novel Manon Lescaut (1731) by Antoine François Prévost into stage plays, ballets, operas, and films. The novel tells a tragic love story about a French nobleman (known only as the Chevalier des Grieux) and a common woman (Manon Lescaut). The first adaptation was a theatrical comedy in 1772. Early theatrical and operatic adaptations were not particularly successful, but several major operas were produced in the 19th century. The most renowned adaptations of Manon Lescaut are operas by Daniel Auber (1856), Jules Massenet (1884), and Giacomo Puccini (1893; performance pictured). Film adaptations followed as soon as the medium was invented, beginning with a 1908 silent-film adaptation of Puccini's opera. (Full list...)

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Today's featured picture

The Pacific kingfisher (Todiramphus sacer) is a medium-sized bird in the kingfisher family, Alcedinidae. It belongs to the subfamily Halcyoninae, the tree kingfishers, and is found in the South Pacific islands, including American Samoa, Fiji, Tonga, Solomon Islands, and Vanuatu. The Pacific kingfisher was formally described in 1788 by the German naturalist Johann Friedrich Gmelin and was initially placed in the genus Alcedo, but since 1827 it has been placed in the genus Todiramphus. Formerly considered to be a subspecies of the collared kingfisher (T. chloris), a molecular phylogenetic study published in 2015 found that T. chloris was paraphyletic. The Pacific kingfisher perches almost motionless for long periods waiting for prey and its diet includes insects, worms, snails, shrimps, frogs, lizards, small fish and sometimes other small birds and eggs. This Pacific kingfisher was photographed in the Colo-i-Suva Forest Reserve, Fiji, perching with prey in its beak.

Photograph credit: JJ Harrison

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