Title is the debut major-label studio album by American singer-songwriter Meghan Trainor(pictured), released on January 9, 2015. Initially a songwriter for other artists in 2013, Trainor signed with Epic Records the following year and began recording material she co-wrote with Kevin Kadish. They drew influence from retro-styled music as they were tired of chasing radio trends. Title includes "All About That Bass", which reached number one in 58 countries, and two other US Billboard Hot 100 top-10 singles: "Lips Are Movin" and "Like I'm Gonna Lose You". Reviewers criticized the album's repetitiveness and doubted Trainor's longevity, though some appreciated her wit and audacious attitude. It debuted at number one on charts in the US, Canada and the UK, and spent multiple weeks at the summit in Australia and New Zealand. Title was the ninth-best-selling album of 2015 worldwide. It was supported by the 2015 That Bass Tour and MTrain Tour. (This article is part of two featured topics: Title and Meghan Trainor albums.)
The Ferrari FF is a grand touring car made by the Italian carmaker Ferrari. Succeeding the 612 Scaglietti, the FF—whose name is an acronym for "Ferrari Four"—was produced between 2011 and 2016 in Ferrari's manufacturing facility in Maranello, Italy. Featuring the body style of a shooting brake, the vehicle made its first public appearance at the Geneva International Motor Show in 2011. Upon its release, the FF was the world's fastest four-seater car and Ferrari's second-fastest grand tourer after the 599 GTO. The FF features a 6.3 L V12 engine, producing a power output of 485 kW (660 PS; 651 hp) and a torque output of 683 N⋅m (504 lb⋅ft) to give the car a top speed of 335 km/h (208 mph) and a 0 to 100 km/h (62 mph) acceleration of 3.7 seconds. The car has been praised by critics, who call it a "Ferrari for the whole family" and appreciate its design. The FF has received several awards, including Top Gear's Estate Car of the Year in 2011. (Full article...)
Burial chamber of Kha and Merit as discovered in 1906
The tomb of Kha and Merit is the funerary chapel and burial place of the ancient Egyptian foreman Kha and his wife Merit, in the northern cemetery of the workmen's village of Deir el-Medina. Kha supervised the workforce who constructed royal tombs during the reigns of the pharaohs Amenhotep II, Thutmose IV and Amenhotep III (r. 1425 – 1353 BC) in the mid–Eighteenth Dynasty of the early New Kingdom of Egypt. He died in his 60s, while Merit died before him in her 20s or 30s. The couple's pyramid-shaped chapel has been known since at least 1818. The tomb was cut into the base of the cliffs. This position allowed the entrance to be quickly buried by debris deposited by landslides and later tomb construction, hiding its location from ancient robbers. Almost all of the contents of the tomb were awarded to the excavators and were shipped to Italy soon after the discovery. They have been displayed in the Museo Egizio in Turin since its arrival, and an entire gallery is devoted to it. (Full article...)
2003 – After Chicago police detective Jon Burge was discovered to have forced confessions from more than 200 suspects, the governor of Illinois commuted the death sentences of 167 prisoners and pardoned four others.
Smash Hit is a 2014 rail-shooter video game developed and published by the Swedish indie game studio Mediocre. Through the game's eleven levels, the player takes a first-person perspective, shooting metal balls to destroy glass obstacles. The player can also shoot up to five balls at once by smashing a consecutive sequence of crystals and gather power-ups that are activated for a limited amount of time. The game also features a one-time in-game purchase that allows the player to start from any unlocked checkpoint. The game's development team consisted of Dennis Gustafsson, Henrik Johansson, and Douglas Holmquist. A virtual reality adaptation of the game was released for platforms in 2015 and 2018. Smash Hit received positive acclaim from reviewers, who praised its physics engine, graphics, music, and sound effects. CNET and Apple Inc. listed it as one of the best mobile games of 2014. Gustafsson and Holmquist later worked on Teardown after Mediocre closed in 2017. (Full article...)
1970 – The self-proclaimed Republic of Biafra in southeastern Nigeria surrendered to the federal government less than three years after declaring independence, ending the Nigerian Civil War.
The cherry-throated tanager (Nemosia rourei) is a critically endangered bird native to the Atlantic Forest in Brazil. Since its description in 1870, there had been no confirmed sightings for more than 100 years, and it was feared that the species was extinct. It was rediscovered in 1998 in the state of Espírito Santo. By the end of 2023, 20 individuals were known and the total population was estimated to be less than 50 birds. The main threat to its survival is the large-scale destruction of the old-growth rainforest that it requires, and in 2018 it was estimated that the species was restricted to a total area of just 31 km2 (12 sq mi). It has a striking gray, black and white plumage, with a distinctive red throat patch. The yellow or dark amber eyes contrast with a black face mask. Its call is clear and far-carrying. A social species, it lives in flocks of up to eight birds. The birds breed once a year, building a cup nest of beard lichen and spider web; nests contain two or three eggs. (Full article...)
Night of January 16th is a play by Ayn Rand inspired by the death of Ivar Kreuger, an industrialist and accused swindler known as the Match King. The play is set in a courtroom during a murder trial and audience members are chosen to play the jury. The court hears the case of Karen Andre, a former secretary and lover of businessman Bjorn Faulkner, of whose murder she is accused. The jury must rely on character testimony to decide whether Andre is guilty; the play's ending depends on their verdict. Rand wanted to dramatize a conflict between individualism and conformity. The play was first produced in 1934 in Los Angeles under the title Woman on Trial. Producer A. H. Woods took it to Broadway for the 1935–36 season and re-titled it Night of January 16th(flyer pictured). It became a hit and ran for seven months. The play has been adapted as a film, as well as for television and radio. Rand had many disputes with Woods over the play, and in 1968 re-edited it for publication as her "definitive" version. (Full article...)
2018 – In Mrauk U, Myanmar, police fired into a crowd protesting the ban of an event to mark the anniversary of the end of the Kingdom of Mrauk U, resulting in seven deaths and twelve injuries.
William Robinson Brown (January 17, 1875 – August 4, 1955) was a corporate officer of the Brown Company and a breeder of Arabian horses. He advocated for sustainable forest management practices and his innovations became industry standards. He was influenced by the progressive movement, instituting employee benefits at the Brown Company that predated modern workers' compensation laws. He founded the Maynesboro Stud in 1912 with bloodstock from American breeders of Arabian horses, also importing horses from England, France, and Egypt. At its peak, Maynesboro was the largest Arabian horse farm in the United States. To prove the abilities of Arabians, he organized several endurance races, which his horses won three times. He served as the president of the Arabian Horse Club of America from 1918 until 1939. His 1929 book The Horse of the Desert is an authoritative work on Arabians. A Republican, he served as a presidential elector for New Hampshire in 1924. (Full article...)
Freston is a Neolithic causewayed enclosure at an archaeological site near the village of Freston in Suffolk, England. The Neolithic enclosure was first identified in 1969 from cropmarks in aerial photographs. At 8.55 hectares (21.1 acres), it is one of the largest causewayed enclosures in Britain, and would have required thousands of person-days to construct. The cropmarks show an enclosure with two circuits of ditches, and a palisade that ran between the two circuits. There is also evidence of a rectangular structure in the northeastern part of the site, which may be a Neolithic long house or an Anglo-Saxon hall. Excavation in 2019 indicated that the site was constructed in the mid–4th millennium BC. Other finds included oak charcoal fragments believed to come from the palisade, and evidence of a long ditch to the southeast that probably predated the enclosure, and which may have accompanied a long barrow, a form of Neolithic burial mound. The site has been protected as a scheduled monument since 1976. (Full article...)
1956 – Navvab Safavi, an Iranian Shia cleric and the founder of the fundamentalist group Fada'iyan-e Islam, was executed with three of his followers for attempting to assassinate Prime Minister Hossein Ala'.
1983 – Thirty years after his death, the International Olympic Committee presented commemorative medals to the family of American athlete Jim Thorpe, who had been stripped of his gold medals for playing semi-professional baseball before the 1912 Summer Olympics.
Ada Wong is a fictional character in Resident Evil (Biohazard in Japan), a survival horror video game series created by the Japanese company Capcom. Ada was first mentioned in the original Resident Evil (1996), before being introduced as a supporting character and antiheroine in Resident Evil 2 (1998). The character was initially conceived as a researcher named Linda for the prototype of the second game, but her name was changed to Ada and she was rewritten as a spy and mercenary for the final build to connect its story to that of the original. Over the course of the series, Ada is often hired to steal biological weapons for various organizations, although she betrays her employers on numerous occasions to save protagonist Leon S. Kennedy from dire situations. Ada is featured in several Resident Evil games, novelizations, and films, and has also appeared in other game franchises such as Project X Zone, Teppen, and Dead by Daylight. (Full article...)
Castell Coch is a 19th-century Gothic Revival castle built above the village of Tongwynlais in South Wales. The first castle on the site was built by the Normans after 1081 to protect the newly conquered town of Cardiff. The castle's earth motte was reused by Gilbert de Clare as the basis for a new stone fortification, built between 1267 and 1277. John Crichton-Stuart, 3rd Marquess of Bute, inherited the castle ruins in 1848. One of Britain's wealthiest men, he employed the architect William Burges to reconstruct the castle as a summer residence. Burges rebuilt the outside before his death in 1881, and the interior work was finished by his team in 1891; it featured elaborate decorations including extensive use of symbolism drawing on themes from classical mythology and legend. Crichton-Stuart planted a vineyard just below the castle, where wine production continued until the First World War. Castell Coch is considered to be one of the best surviving examples of Victorian architecture. (Full article...)
1957 – American inventor Fred Morrison sold the rights to his "flying disc" to the Wham-O toy company, who later renamed it the "Frisbee" (example pictured).
1536 – King Henry VIII of England(pictured) suffered a serious accident while jousting, receiving injuries which may have caused his later obesity and erratic personality.
The new wave of British heavy metal began in the late 1970s and achieved international attention by the early 1980s. Encompassing diverse mainstream and underground styles, the music often infused 1970s heavy metal music with the intensity of punk rock to produce fast and aggressive songs. The do-it-yourself ethic of the new metal bands led to the spread of raw-sounding, self-produced recordings and a proliferation of independent record labels. Song lyrics were usually about escapist themes from mythology, fantasy, horror or the rock lifestyle. The movement involved mostly young, white, male musicians and fans of the heavy metal subculture, whose behavioural and visual codes were quickly adopted by metal fans worldwide after the spread of the music globally. The movement spawned perhaps a thousand bands, but only a few survived the rise of MTV and glam metal. Among them, Motörhead(singer pictured) and Saxon had considerable success, and Iron Maiden and Def Leppard became international stars. (Full article...)
"Telephone" is a song by Lady Gaga featuring Beyoncé(both pictured) and released on January 26, 2010. "Telephone" conveys Gaga's fear of not finding time for fun given the increasing pressure for her to work harder. The song consists of an expanded bridge and verse-rap; Beyoncé appears in the middle of the song, singing the verses in a "rapid-fire" way, accompanied by double beats. "Telephone" received positive reviews from critics who praised Gaga's chemistry with Beyoncé. It was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals. The song charted in many countries and sold 7.4 million digital copies worldwide in 2010, making it the year's fourth best-selling single. The music video follows Beyoncé as she bails Gaga out of prison for killing her boyfriend and ends with the two trying to escape a high-speed police chase. The video received generally positive reviews and was nominated for three awards at the 2010 MTV Video Music Awards. (Full article...)
The Holocaust in Bohemia and Moravia resulted in the deportation, dispossession, and murder of most of the pre–World War II population of Jews in the Czech lands that were annexed by Nazi Germany between 1939 and 1945. From the pre-war population of 118,310 some 30,000 Jews managed to emigrate. Most of the remaining Jews were deported to other Nazi-controlled territories, starting in October 1939 as part of the Nisko Plan. In October 1941, mass deportations of Protectorate Jews began. Beginning in November 1941, the transports departed for Theresienstadt Ghetto in the Protectorate which was a stopping-point before deportation to other ghettos, extermination camps, and other killing sites. About 80,000 Jews from Bohemia and Moravia were murdered in the Holocaust. After the war, many Jews faced obstacles in regaining their property and pressure to assimilate into the Czech majority. Most Jews emigrated; a few were deported as part of the expulsion of Germans from Czechoslovakia. (Full article...)
Lewis W. Green (January 28, 1806 – May 26, 1863) was an American Presbyterian minister, educator, and academic administrator. Born in Danville, Kentucky, and educated in Woodford County, he enrolled at Transylvania University but transferred to Centre College to complete his degree. He graduated in 1824 as one of two members of Centre's first graduating class. He enrolled at Princeton Theological Seminary in 1831 but returned to Kentucky the following year. He spent time as a professor and minister before returning to Centre in 1839 as its vice president. In January 1849, he was elected president of Hampden–Sydney College, where he spent eight years. He left to become president of Transylvania in November 1856 shortly following the establishment of a normal school there by the Kentucky General Assembly. He resigned a year later, following the repeal of the bill that created the normal school, and became president of Centre. He led his alma mater through parts of the Civil War and died in office in May 1863. (Full article...)
Dominik Hašek (born 29 January 1965) is a Czech former ice hockey goaltender. He won the Vezina Trophy six times with the National Hockey League (NHL), the most under the award's current system. In 1998, he became the first goaltender to win the Hart Memorial Trophy twice. During the 1998 Winter Olympics, he led the Czech national ice hockey team to its first Olympic gold medal. In 2002, Hašek became the first European-trained starting goaltender to win the Stanley Cup and set a record for shutouts in a postseason year. He was considered an unorthodox goaltender, with a distinct style that led to him being labeled a "flopper". He holds the highest career save percentage of all time, and is the only goaltender to face the most shots per 60 minutes and have the highest save percentage in the same season. Hašek was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame and is a member of the Czech Ice Hockey Hall of Fame and the IIHF Hall of Fame. His number was retired by the Buffalo Sabres and HC Pardubice. (Full article...)
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