Wikiwand Today
Your daily knowledge snacks, directly from Wikipedia
Latest News
- Petr Pavel (pictured) is elected as president of the Czech Republic.
- Cyclone Cheneso leaves at least 25 people dead in Madagascar.
- An armed attack on the Azerbaijani Embassy in Iran leaves one person dead and two others injured.
- Chris Hipkins succeeds Jacinda Ardern as prime minister of New Zealand and leader of the Labour Party after her resignation.
- Brahim Ghali is re-elected as secretary general of the Polisario Front and president of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic.
- A helicopter crashes near Kyiv, killing fourteen people, including Ukrainian interior minister Denys Monastyrsky.
Today in History
January 30: Martyrs' Day in India (1948)
- 1607 – Low-lying places around the coasts of the Bristol Channel of Britain were flooded, resulting in an estimated 2,000 deaths.
- 1835 – Richard Lawrence became the first person to attempt to assassinate a sitting US president when he failed to kill Andrew Jackson at the US Capitol (assassination attempt pictured) and was subdued by the crowd.
- 1939 – In a speech to the Reichstag, Adolf Hitler threatened the "annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe".
- 1972 – The Troubles: On Bloody Sunday, members of the British Parachute Regiment shot 26 civil-rights protesters in Derry, Northern Ireland, killing at least 13 people.
- William More (b. 1520)
- Angela of the Cross (b. 1846)
- Abdullah II of Jordan (b. 1962)
Did You Know?
- ... that during the bloody siege of Badajoz, William Nicholas (pictured) was wounded by musket-ball and bayonet, but continued to give orders and was carried up the breach, only to be shot again?
- ... that David Bowie frequently updated the lyrics for his song "Young Americans" to keep them contemporary?
- ... that in 1991, Juan López Mella was the first Spanish rider to achieve a podium place in the Superbike World Championship?
- ... that after complaints of A Pickle for the Knowing Ones lacking punctuation, the author published a second edition with full pages of punctuation in the appendix?
- ... that in 1998, the Mercedes-Benz CLK GTR received the Guinness World Record for the most expensive production car?
- ... that the 1995 dedication ceremony for the Faces of War Memorial included missing-man flyovers?
- ... that fossils are included in Polystoechotites due to being poorly fossilized, rather than due to relation?
- ... that politician Kalervo Kummola introduced karaoke to Finland?
Today's Featured Article
The black-breasted buttonquail (Turnix melanogaster) is a buttonquail endemic to eastern Australia. It is a plump quail-shaped bird with white eyes and predominantly marbled black, rufous and pale brown plumage, marked prominently with white spots and stripes. Like other buttonquails, it is unrelated to the true quails, and the female is larger and more boldly coloured than the male, with a distinctive black head and neck sprinkled with fine white markings. The usual sex roles are reversed, as the female mates with multiple male partners and leaves them to incubate the eggs. It is usually found in rainforest and forages in large areas of thick leaf litter. Most of its original habitat has been cleared, and the remaining populations are fragmented. The black-breasted buttonquail is listed as vulnerable on the IUCN Red List and under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999. A three-year conservation project has been under way since 2021. (Full article...)
Today's Featured Picture
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Frontonia is a genus of free-living unicellular ciliate protists, belonging to the order Peniculida. As Peniculids, the Frontonia are closely related to members of the genus Paramecium. However, whereas Paramecia are mainly bacterivores, Frontonia are capable of ingesting large prey such as diatoms, filamentous algae, testate amoebas, and even, in some circumstances, members of their own species. Photograph credit: Wiedehopf20
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