Template:TFA archive

WP:TFAA

Today's featured article archive

June 1

Logo of Namco Limited

Namco Limited was a Japanese multinational video game and entertainment company founded in 1955 by Masaya Nakamura which operated video arcades, amusement parks, produced video games, films, toys, and arcade cabinets. In the 1960s, it manufactured electro-mechanical arcade games such as the 1965 game Periscope. It entered the video game industry after acquiring the Japanese division of Atari in 1974, distributing games such as Breakout and Gee Bee. Among Namco's first major hits was the fixed shooter Galaxian in 1979 and Pac-Man in 1980. During the golden age of arcade video games in the early 1980s, Namco released titles such as Galaga, Xevious, and Pole Position. Namco entered the home market in 1984 with conversions of its arcade games. Namco produced several multi-million-selling game franchises, such as Pac-Man, Galaxian, Tekken, Tales, Ridge Racer, Ace Combat, and Taiko no Tatsujin. In 2006, Namco merged with Bandai to form Bandai Namco Holdings. (Full article...)

Recently featured:

June 2

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...)

Recently featured:

June 3

No. 2 Squadron Canberra, which Evans flew in Vietnam

Selwyn David Evans (3 June 1925 – 2 September 2020) was a senior commander of the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) and a writer and consultant on defence matters. He was a member of the Australian contingent in the Berlin Airlift, then a VIP captain with the Governor-General's Flight, the latter of which earned him the Air Force Cross. In the 1960s, Evans was twice posted to No. 2 Squadron, where he flew Canberra jet bombers (example pictured) and was awarded the Distinguished Service Order after completing a tour in Vietnam. He became Chief of Air Force Operations and was later promoted to Chief of the Air Staff. Evans was appointed Companion of the Order of Australia in 1984. Retiring from the RAAF in 1985, he was a board member and advisor to British Aerospace Australia, and chairman of the National Capital Authority. In 2001, he was awarded the Centenary Medal for his services to the Australian Defence Force and the Canberra community. (Full article...)

Recently featured:

June 4

Photograph of the convention

The 1880 Republican National Convention (June 2 to 8, 1880, Chicago) resulted in the nominations of James A. Garfield of Ohio and Chester A. Arthur of New York as the Republican Party candidates for U.S. president and vice president. Leaders in the early balloting at the convention, which deadlocked for several days, were former president Ulysses S. Grant, Senator James G. Blaine of Maine, and John Sherman, the treasury secretary. After the 35th ballot, Blaine and Sherman switched their support to a new "dark horse", Garfield, a congressman from Ohio, who had nominated Sherman. On the 36th ballot, Garfield won the nomination. After Arthur won the vice presidential nomination on the first ballot, the longest-ever Republican National Convention adjourned. The Garfield–Arthur Republican ticket narrowly defeated Democrats Winfield Scott Hancock and William H. English in the 1880 presidential election. (This article is part of a featured topic: 1880 United States presidential election.)

Recently featured:

June 5

The southern entrance

Trafford Park is an area of the Metropolitan Borough of Trafford, Greater Manchester, England, opposite Salford Quays on the southern side of the Manchester Ship Canal, 3.4 miles (5.5 km) southwest of Manchester city centre. Until the late 19th century, it was the ancestral home of the Trafford family, who sold it to financier Ernest Terah Hooley in 1896. It was the first planned industrial estate in the world and remains the largest in Europe, at 4.7 square miles (12 km²). Trafford Park was a major supplier of materiel in the First and Second World Wars, producing the Rolls-Royce Merlin engines used to power both the Spitfire and the Lancaster. At its peak in 1945, an estimated 75,000 workers were employed in the park. Employment began to decline in the 1960s as companies closed in favour of newer, more efficient plants elsewhere. The new Manchester Metrolink line from Pomona to the Trafford Centre opened in 2020. (Full article...)

Recently featured:

June 6

Traffic control on the Red Ball Express

American logistics in the Northern France campaign played a key role in the breakout of the Allies from the lodgment in Normandy that began on 25 July 1944 and the subsequent pursuit of the defeated German forces. The advance was much faster than expected; the rapid increase in the length of the line of communications threw up unanticipated logistical challenges. The logistical plan lacked flexibility, the rehabilitation of railways and construction of pipelines could not keep up with the pace of the advance, and resupply by air had limited capacity. Critical shortages developed, particularly of petrol, oil and lubricants. Motor transport was used as a stopgap, with the Red Ball Express (pictured) organized to deliver supplies from Normandy, but there was a shortage of suitable vehicles and trained drivers, and racial segregation complicated personnel assignment. Logistical problems and increased German resistance eventually stalled the American advance. (Full article...)

Recently featured:

June 7

Confederate flag originally issued to the regiment

The 8th Missouri Infantry Regiment was an infantry regiment of the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War. In 1862, the unit entered Confederate service and participated in the Battle of Prairie Grove, where the unit's charges against the Union lines were repulsed by artillery fire. The regiment spent early 1863 encamped near Little Rock and Pine Bluff in Arkansas, and was part of the Confederate defense of Little Rock before retiring to Camp Bragg. In 1864, the regiment went to Louisiana to help defend against the Red River campaign. It was part of a failed attack at the Battle of Pleasant Hill, then sent back to Arkansas. The regiment took part in a failed attack at the Battle of Jenkins' Ferry, then was stationed at several points in Louisiana and Arkansas. After the Confederate Trans-Mississippi Department surrendered, the men of the 8th Missouri Infantry Regiment were paroled on June 7, ending the regiment's service. (Full article...)

Recently featured:

June 8

Official portrait, 1992

Barbara Bush (June 8, 1925 – April 17, 2018) was First Lady of the United States from 1989 to 1993, the wife of the 41st president, George H. W. Bush. Born in New York City and raised in Rye, her children include George W. Bush, the 43rd president, and Jeb Bush, the 43rd governor of Florida. She and Abigail Adams are the only two women to be the wife of one U.S. president and the mother of another. Bush was generally popular as First Lady, recognized for her apolitical grandmotherly image. Founder of the Barbara Bush Foundation for Family Literacy, and diagnosed with Graves' disease in 1989, she frequently carried out charity work, including support for people with AIDS. She spoke at commencement in 1990 at Wellesley College; her selection was controversial, but the speech was widely regarded as a success. She remained active in political campaigning after leaving the White House, as her sons George and Jeb each ran for both governor and president. (Full article...)

Recently featured:

June 9

Kate Moss in 2019

The illusion of Kate Moss is an art piece first shown at the conclusion of the Alexander McQueen runway show The Widows of Culloden (Autumn/Winter 2006). It consists of a short film of English model Kate Moss (pictured) dancing slowly while wearing a long, billowing gown of white chiffon, projected life-size within a glass pyramid in the centre of the show's catwalk. Although sometimes referred to as a hologram, the illusion was made using a 19th-century theatre technique called Pepper's ghost. McQueen conceived the illusion as a gesture of support for Moss; she was a close friend of his and was embroiled in a drug-related scandal at the time of the Widows show. It is regarded by many critics as the highlight of the Widows runway show, and it has been the subject of a great deal of academic analysis, particularly as a wedding dress and as a memento mori. The illusion appeared in both versions of Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty, a retrospective exhibition of McQueen's designs. (Full article...)

Recently featured:

June 10

Robert Pattinson (born 1986) is a British actor known for his work in major studio productions and independent films. He played supporting roles in Vanity Fair (2004) and Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005), the latter becoming the highest-grossing film of 2005. He continued taking on small roles before rising to prominence as Edward Cullen in The Twilight Saga film series (2008–2012). The franchise has collectively grossed more than US$3.3 billion worldwide. Pattinson began working in independent films from auteur directors before returning to big-budget cinema with Tenet (2020) and The Batman (2022). Pattinson's sex appeal is widely discussed in the media, and he is regarded as a sex symbol; People has included him in its "Sexiest Men Alive" list twice. Beyond acting, Pattinson has modelled since childhood and has been the face of the Dior Homme fragrance since 2013. He is involved in philanthropy and supports the GO Campaign, and he is also a musician, playing the piano and guitar. (Full article...)

Recently featured:

June 11

Excerpt of a piece written for the concerto

The concerto delle donne was an ensemble of professional female singers of late Renaissance music in Italy. The term usually refers to the first and most influential group, which existed between 1580 and 1597 in Ferrara. The Ferrarese group's core members were the sopranos Laura Peverara, Livia d'Arco and Anna Guarini; they were renowned for their technical and artistic virtuosity. In 1580, Alfonso II d'Este, Duke of Ferrara, formally established the concerto delle donne, including professional singers of upper-class, but not noble, backgrounds. Their signature style of florid, highly ornamented singing brought prestige to Ferrara and inspired composers of the time such as Lodovico Agostini, Carlo Gesualdo and Claudio Monteverdi. The concerto delle donne revolutionized the role of women in professional music, and continued the tradition of the Este court as a musical center. Word of the ensemble spread, inspiring imitations in the courts of the Medici and Orsini. (Full article...)

Recently featured:

June 12

Carey in 2010

Mariah Carey (born 1969) is an American singer, songwriter, record producer, and actress. She rose to fame with her self-titled debut album, released on June 12, 1990, and has released fifteen studio albums, most recently Caution (2018). Known for her five-octave vocal range and signature use of the whistle register, she has been dubbed the "Songbird Supreme" by the Guinness World Records. Carey is one of the best-selling music artists, with more than 220 million units sold worldwide, and holds the record for the most number-one singles on the US Billboard Hot 100 by a solo artist. In addition, Carey's singles have spent a record 97 weeks atop the chart, and she is the only artist to have their first five singles reach number one on the chart. Carey has received various accolades, and has been inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame and the National Recording Registry at the Library of Congress. Rolling Stone ranked her as the fifth-greatest singer of all time in 2023. (Full article...)

Recently featured:

June 13

1860 bronze farthing, depicting Britannia

Beginning in 1860, Britain replaced its copper coinage with bronze pieces. The existing copper coins (principally the penny, the halfpenny and the farthing) were seen as too large and heavy. Thomas Graham, the master of the Mint, persuaded William Gladstone, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, to replace them. Gladstone secured authorising legislation and a vote of funds in Parliament. Leonard Charles Wyon of the Royal Mint was tasked with rendering designs for the new coinage. He produced an obverse for the new coins depicting Queen Victoria, who modelled for him. The reverse featured Britannia (pictured). With the aid of two outside firms, the Royal Mint struck enough of the new bronze coins that it began calling in the copper pieces in 1861, a process complete after 1877, although less than half in terms of value of the extant coppers were paid in. The new coins remained current until the run-up to decimalisation in 1971, except for the farthing, which was demonetised from 1 January 1961. (Full article...)

Recently featured:

June 14

Fossil of P. pustulosus at the Jura Museum

Pseudastacus is an extinct genus of decapod crustaceans that lived during the Jurassic period in Europe, and possibly the Cretaceous period in Lebanon. Reaching up to 6 cm (2.4 in) in total length, Pseudastacus had a crayfish-like build, with long antennae, a triangular rostrum and a frontmost pair of appendages enlarged into pincers, with those of females being more elongated. There is evidence of possible gregarious behavior in P. lemovices in the form of multiple individuals preserved alongside each other, possibly killed in a mass mortality event. With the oldest known record dating to the Sinemurian age of the Early Jurassic, and possible species surviving into the Cenomanian stage of the Late Cretaceous, Pseudastacus has a long temporal range and was a widespread taxon. Fossils of this animal were first found in the Solnhofen Limestone of Germany, but have also been recorded from France, England and Lebanon. All species in this genus lived in marine habitats. (Full article...)

Recently featured:

June 15

The painting

The Combat: Woman Pleading for the Vanquished is an oil painting on canvas by English artist William Etty which is inspired by the Elgin Marbles and intended by the artist to provide a moral lesson on "the beauty of mercy". It shows a near-nude warrior whose sword has broken, forced to his knees in front of another near-nude soldier who prepares to inflict a killing blow. A woman, also near-nude, clutches the victorious warrior to beg him for mercy. Unusually for a history painting of the period, it does not depict a scene from history, literature or religion and is not based on an existing artwork. When it was shown at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition of 1825, it attracted praise from critics for its technical excellence, its fusion of the styles of different schools of painting, and its subject matter. It was later bought by fellow artist John Martin and in 1831 he sold it on to the Royal Scottish Academy. It was transferred in 1910 to the National Gallery of Scotland. (Full article...)

Recently featured:

June 16

Emmy Noether (1882 – 1935) was a German mathematician who made important contributions to abstract algebra. Described by Einstein as the most important woman in the history of mathematics, she proved Noether's first and second theorems, fundamental in mathematical physics. Noether developed theories of rings, fields, and algebras. In physics, Noether's theorem explains the connection between symmetry and conservation laws. Born to a Jewish family in Erlangen; her work in Germany, principally at Göttingen University came at a time when women were largely excluded from academia there. In 1933, Germany's Nazi government dismissed Jews from university positions, and Noether moved to the U.S., teaching at Bryn Mawr College and at the Institute for Advanced Study. Noether was generous with her ideas and is credited with several lines of research published by others, even in fields far removed from her main work, such as algebraic topology. (Full article...)

Recently featured:

June 17

The russet sparrow is a passerine bird of the sparrow family Passeridae, distributed in eastern Asia. A chunky little seed-eating bird with a thick bill, it has a body length of 14 to 15 cm (5.5–5.9 in). Its plumage is mainly warm rufous above and grey below. It exhibits sexual dimorphism, with the plumage of both sexes patterned similarly to that of the corresponding sex of the house sparrow. Its vocalisations are sweet and musical chirps, which when strung together form a song. The russet sparrow is known well enough in the Himalayas to have a distinct name in some languages, and is depicted in Japanese art. It feeds mainly on the seeds of herbs and grains, but it also eats berries and insects, particularly during the breeding season. This diet makes it a minor pest in agricultural areas, but also a predator of insect pests. It is a social bird within its own species, but disperses to breed. The typical clutch has five or six whitish eggs. Both sexes incubate and feed the young. (Full article...)

Recently featured:

June 18

Ian Carmichael (18 June 1920 – 5 February 2010) was an English actor who had a career that spanned seventy years. Born in Kingston upon Hull, he trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, but his studies—and the early stages of his career—were curtailed by the Second World War. After initial success in revue and sketch productions, he was cast by the film producers John and Roy Boulting to star in a series of satires, starting with Private's Progress in 1956 through to I'm All Right Jack in 1959. In the mid-1960s he played Bertie Wooster for BBC Television for which he received positive reviews, including from P. G. Wodehouse, the writer who created the Wooster character. In the early 1970s he played another upper-class literary character, Lord Peter Wimsey, the amateur but talented investigator created by Dorothy L. Sayers. Carmichael was often typecast as an affable but bumbling upper-class innocent, but he retained a disciplined approach to training and rehearsing. (Full article...)

Recently featured:

June 19

History is the systematic study of the past with its main focus on the human past. Historians analyse and interpret primary and secondary sources to construct narratives about what happened and explain why it happened. They engage in source criticism to assess the authenticity, content, and reliability of these sources. It is controversial whether the resulting historical narratives can be truly objective and whether history is a social science rather than a discipline of the humanities. Influential schools of thought include positivism, the Annales school, Marxism, and postmodernism. Some branches of history focus on specific time periods, such as ancient history, particular geographic regions, such as the history of Africa, or distinct themes, such as political, social, and economic history. History emerged as a field of inquiry in antiquity to replace myth-infused narratives, with influential early traditions originating in Greece, China, and later in the Islamic world. (Full article...)

Recently featured:

June 20

Jaws is an American thriller film released June 20, 1975, directed by Steven Spielberg, and based on the 1974 novel by Peter Benchley (paperback cover shown; for the film poster, see today's Picture of the Day). It stars Roy Scheider as police chief Martin Brody, who, with the help of a marine biologist (Richard Dreyfuss) and a professional shark hunter (Robert Shaw), hunts a man-eating great white shark that has attacked beachgoers at his summer resort town. The film was distributed by Universal Pictures' to over 450 screens, a wide release for the time, was extensively marketed, and was followed by three sequels. Regarded as a watershed in motion picture history, Jaws was the prototypical summer blockbuster and the highest-grossing film of all time until Star Wars two years later; both films were pivotal in establishing the modern Hollywood business model. Jaws was in 2001 selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the National Film Registry. (Full article...)

Recently featured:

June 21

1781 engraving

Johann Reinhold Forster (1729 – 1798) was a German pastor and naturalist. He studied theology at the University of Halle. In 1765, Forster was hired by Russia to inspect its colonies on the Volga; his report was critical and he left for England, unpaid. Forster succeeded Joseph Priestley at Warrington Academy, published a mineralogy textbook and translations of foreign works. After Joseph Banks withdrew from the James Cook's second voyage, Forster became the naturalist on Cook's ship. On the journey, they made the first recorded crossing of the Antarctic Circle and observations and discoveries in New Zealand and Polynesia. Amid disputes with Cook over who should publish accounts of the journey, Forster published his scientific Observations Made During a Voyage Round the World. Having alienated many powerful men in England, Forster returned to Germany, becoming a professor at Halle; he died in 1798. He is commemorated in the names of species, including the genera Forstera and Forsterygion. (Full article...)

Recently featured:

June 22

Carpenter in 1964

Scott Carpenter (1925 – 2013) was one of the Mercury Seven astronauts selected for NASA's Project Mercury. In 1962 Carpenter flew the Mercury-Atlas 7 mission to become the second American to orbit Earth and the fourth to fly into space. His spacecraft, which he named Aurora 7, malfunctioned and landed 250 miles (400 km) from its intended splashdown point. In 1964, Carpenter took a leave of absence to join the U.S. Navy SEALAB project. During aquanaut training he suffered injuries that grounded him, making him unavailable for further spaceflights. In 1965, he spent 28 days on the ocean floor as part of SEALAB II. He returned to NASA as Executive Assistant to the Director of the Manned Spacecraft Center. He retired from NASA in 1967 and the Navy in 1969, with the rank of commander. Carpenter became a consultant on space flight and oceanography. He appeared in television commercials and wrote a pair of technothrillers and an autobiography. (Full article...)

Recently featured:

June 23

The Battle of Groix was fought on 23 June 1795 off the Biscay coast of Brittany between elements of the British Channel Fleet, commanded by Admiral Lord Bridport, and the French Atlantic Fleet, under Vice-admiral Villaret de Joyeuse. The British fleet of 14 ships of the line was covering an invasion convoy when it encountered the 12 French ships of the line returning to base at Brest. Villaret ordered his force to take shelter in protected coastal waters, but several ships fell behind. After fierce fights, three French ships were captured; the remainder became scattered and were vulnerable, but Bridport, concerned by the rocky coastline, called off the action. Most historians have considered Bridport's retirement from the battle to be premature, and concluded that an opportunity to destroy the French fleet may have been squandered. The French were trapped in Lorient where food supplies ran out, crippling the fleet. Several French captains were court-martialled following the battle. (Full article...)

Recently featured:

June 24

Sirius A with Sirius B, a white dwarf, indicated by the arrow

A white dwarf is a stellar core remnant composed mostly of electron-degenerate matter, supported against its own gravity only by electron degeneracy pressure. A white dwarf is very dense: in an Earth sized volume, it contains a mass comparable to the Sun. What light it radiates is from its residual heat. White dwarfs are thought to be the final evolutionary state of stars whose mass is insufficient for them to become a neutron star or black hole. This includes over 97% of the stars in the Milky Way. After the hydrogen-fusing period of such a main-sequence star ends, it will expand to a red giant and shed its outer layers, leaving behind a core which is the white dwarf. This, very hot when it forms, cools as it radiates its energy until its material begins to crystallize into a cold black dwarf. The oldest known white dwarfs still radiate at temperatures of a few thousand kelvins, which establishes an observational limit on the maximum possible age of the universe. (Full article...)

Recently featured:

June 25

School in Sketty, Swansea, photographed in 1854

The period between 1701 and 1870 saw an expansion in access to formal education in Wales, though schooling was not yet universal. Several philanthropic efforts were made to provide education to the poor during the 18th century. In the early to mid-19th century charitable schools were established to provide a basic education. Private schools aimed at the working classes also existed. State funding was introduced to schools from 1833. Some use of the Welsh language was made in 18th-century philanthropic education at a time when most Welsh peasants were solely Welsh-speaking. In the early 19th century Welsh public opinion was keen for children to learn English. Many schools tried to achieve this by excluding Welsh and punishing children for speaking it. Government investigations in the mid-19th century indicated that this approach was ineffective. The government did not prohibit the use of Welsh but it did little to promote bilingualism in schools during this period. Grammar schools experienced difficulties and by the end of the period secondary education was limited. Dissenter academies and later theological colleges offered higher education. (Full article...)

Recently featured:

June 26

The game was released for the Game Boy

Donkey Kong Land is a platform game developed by Rare and published by Nintendo for the Game Boy (pictured). Released on June 26, 1995, it condenses the side-scrolling gameplay of Donkey Kong Country with different level design and boss fights. The player controls Donkey Kong and Diddy Kong as they recover their stolen banana hoard from King K. Rool. Development began in 1994: Rare's Game Boy programmer, Paul Machacek, developed Land as an original game rather than a port of Country, believing it would be a better use of resources. Land features pre-rendered graphics converted to sprites through a compression technique. Rare retooled Country's gameplay to account for the lower quality display, and David Wise and Graeme Norgate converted the soundtrack to the Game Boy's sound chip. Critics praised it as successfully translating Country's gameplay, visuals, and music to the Game Boy. Land was rereleased for the Nintendo 3DS and the Nintendo Switch. (Full article...)

Recently featured:

June 27

Former judge Igor Judge

Nominative determinism is the hypothesis that people are drawn to professions that fit their name. The term was first used in the magazine New Scientist in 1994, after its humorous Feedback column mentioned a book on polar explorations by Daniel Snowman and an article on urology by researchers named Splatt and Weedon. The hypothesis had been suggested by psychologist Carl Jung, citing as an example Sigmund Freud (German for "joy"), who studied pleasure. A few recent empirical studies have indicated that certain professions are disproportionately represented by people with appropriate surnames, though the methods of these studies have been challenged. One explanation for nominative determinism is the theory of implicit egotism, which states that humans have an unconscious preference for things they associate with themselves. An alternative explanation is genetic: an ancestor might have been named Smith or Taylor according to their occupation, and the genes they passed down might correlate to aptitudes for those professions. (Full article...)

Recently featured:

June 28

HMS Neptune was a dreadnought battleship built for the Royal Navy in the first decade of the 20th century, the sole ship of her class. Laid down at HM Dockyard, Portsmouth in January 1909, she was the first British battleship to be built with superfiring guns. Shortly after her completion in 1911, she carried out trials of an experimental fire-control director and then became the flagship of the Home Fleet. Neptune became a private ship in early 1914 and was assigned to the 1st Battle Squadron. The ship became part of the Grand Fleet when it was formed shortly after the beginning of the First World War in August 1914. Aside from participating in the Battle of Jutland in May 1916, and the inconclusive action of 19 August several months later, her service during the war generally consisted of routine patrols and training in the North Sea. Neptune was deemed obsolete after the war and was reduced to reserve before being sold for scrap in 1922 and subsequently broken up. (Full article...)

Recently featured:

June 29

Magic tablet from Pergamon

The Orphic Hymns are a collection of 87 ancient Greek hymns addressed to various deities, which were attributed in antiquity to the mythical poet Orpheus. They were composed in Asia Minor (in modern-day Turkey), most likely around the 2nd or 3rd centuries AD, and seem to have belonged to a cult community which used them in ritual. The collection is preceded by a proem (or prologue), in which Orpheus addresses the legendary poet Musaeus. The hymns in the collection, all of which are brief, typically call for the attention of the deity they address, describing them and their divinity, and appealing to them with a request. The first codex containing the Orphic Hymns to reach Western Europe arrived in Italy in the first half of the 15th century, and in 1500 the first printed edition of the Hymns was published in Florence. During the Renaissance, some scholars believed that the hymns were a genuine work of Orpheus; later, a more sceptical wave of scholarship argued for a dating in late antiquity. (Full article...)

Recently featured:

June 30

Painting of a princess, most likely Pari Khan Khanum (16th century)

Pari Khan Khanum (1548 – 1578) was a Safavid princess, daughter of the second Safavid shah, Tahmasp I, and his Circassian consort, Sultan-Agha Khanum. Pari Khan played a central role in the succession crisis after her father's death in 1576. She thwarted the plans of her brother Haydar Mirza and enthroned her favoured brother, Ismail Mirza, as Ismail II. Instead of gratitude, she received restrictions and house arrest, and may have been behind his death in 1577. She endorsed her brother Mohammad Khodabanda, who was almost blind, expecting to rule behind the scenes, but his wife, Khayr al-Nisa Begum, emerged as a rival and procured her killing. Regarded as the most powerful woman in Safavid history, Pari Khan was able to dominate the ineffective Safavid court in a society that imposed harsh restrictions on high-class women. Praised by her contemporaries for her intelligence, in later chronicles she was portrayed as a villain who murdered two brothers and tried to usurp the throne. (Full article...)

Recently featured:

Template:TFA archive

Setting up

See also

References