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Today is Wednesday, September 4, 2024.

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Today's featured article

Cover of the first issue

Battle Birds was an American air-war pulp magazine, published by Popular Publications. It was launched at the end of 1932, but did not sell well, and in 1934 the publisher turned it into an air-war hero pulp titled Dusty Ayres and His Battle Birds. Robert Sidney Bowen, an established pulp writer, provided the lead novel each month, and also wrote the short stories that filled out the issue. Bowen's stories were set in the future, with the United States menaced by an Asian empire called the Black Invaders. The change was not successful enough to be extended beyond the initial plan of a year, and Bowen wrote a novel in which, unusually for pulp fiction, Dusty Ayres finally defeated the invaders, to end the series. The magazine ceased publication with the July/August 1935 issue. It restarted in 1940 under the original title, Battle Birds, and lasted for another four years. All the cover art was painted by Frederick Blakeslee. (Full article...)

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John Milton Brannan (1819–1892) was a career United States Army artillery officer who served in the Mexican–American War and as a Union Army brigadier general of volunteers in the American Civil War. He was in command of the Department of Key West in Florida and assigned to Fort Zachary Taylor. Most notably, Brannan served as a division commander of the Union XIV Corps at the Battle of Chickamauga in 1863. This photograph of Brannan was produced by the studio of the American photographer Mathew Brady circa the 1860s.

Photograph credit: studio of Mathew Brady; restored by Adam Cuerden

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In the news

Paralympics opening ceremony

The Summer Paralympics open (ceremony pictured) in Paris, France.
More than four hundred people are killed in an Islamist militant attack in Barsalogho Department, Burkina Faso.
The Islamic State claims responsibility for a mass stabbing that killed three people at a festival in Solingen, Germany.
In cycling, Katarzyna Niewiadoma wins the Tour de France Femmes.

Did you know...

Precursor to challah adapted from a recipe in the Kitāb al-ṭabīẖ

... that the Kitāb al-ṭabīẖ, a medieval Andalusian cookbook, contains an early version of Jewish challah bread (pictured), which traveled with Jews expelled from Spain and likely influenced Ashkenazi cuisine?
... that at the 2024 Olympics, unranked North Korean table tennis pair Ri Jong Sik and Kim Kum Yong defeated the defending champions and went on to win the silver medal?
... that rivers form 23% of international borders?
... that after composer Maxim Berezovsky's death, Catherine the Great secretly ordered that the papers in his rooms be burned?
... that a Los Angeles summer camp teaches children how to become YouTubers by making toy unboxing videos?
... that brothers Mike McCartney and Paul McCartney, and sisters Dakota Fanning and Elle Fanning, use their middle names as their first names?
... that Abdul Ali Deobandi stipulated that women were prohibited from learning to read and write, even at home?
... that actress Lisa Coleman attended artist Euan Uglow's studio one to three times a week from 1993 to 1996 to model for Articulation?
... that in The Gambia, there is a belief that people can summon evil spirits to cause abortions?

On this day...

September 4

Damage from the Canterbury earthquake in Christchurch

476 – Germanic leader Odoacer captured Ravenna and deposed Emperor Romulus Augustus, marking the fall of the Western Roman Empire.
1800 – French Revolutionary Wars: Facing starvation and a death rate of 100 soldiers per day, the French garrison in Malta surrendered to British forces, ending a two-year siege.
1843 – The state wedding of Teresa Cristina of the Two Sicilies and Emperor Pedro II of Brazil took place at the Cathedral of Rio de Janeiro.
1977 – The Golden Dragon massacre occurred in Chinatown, San Francisco, leaving five dead and spurring police to end Chinese gang violence in the city.
2010 – A magnitude-7.1 earthquake (damage pictured) struck the Canterbury Region of New Zealand, causing two deaths and up to NZ$40 billion in damages.

Maria of Castile (d. 1458)
Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester (d. 1588)
Konstantin Kalser (b. 1920)
Yoani Sánchez (b. 1975)

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