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From today's featured article

Francis Nash's home

Francis Nash (c. 1742 – October 7, 1777) was a brigadier general in the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War. As a lawyer and public official in Hillsborough, North Carolina, he opposed the Regulator Movement, an uprising of settlers in the North Carolina Piedmont between 1765 and 1771. He represented Hillsborough in the General Assembly of colonial North Carolina, and was a delegate to the colony's first three Patriot provincial congresses. In 1775, he was named lieutenant colonel of the 1st North Carolina Regiment under Colonel James Moore. He was made a brigadier general in 1777 upon Moore's death, and given command of the North Carolina brigade of the Continental Army under General George Washington. He was wounded at the Battle of Germantown on October 4, 1777, and died several days later. Nash was one of ten Patriot generals to die from wounds received in combat between 1775 and 1781. He is honored by several city and county names, including Nashville, Tennessee. (Full article...)

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Did you know...

A witness's drawing of Białystok children

... that children from the Białystok Ghetto (pictured) panicked when told to undress and shower upon arriving at the Theresienstadt concentration camp, because they knew about gas chambers?
... that most of footballer Laurence Abrams's transfer fee for his move from Hearts was never paid, after Chelsea claimed it would force them to fold?
... that a section of Washington State Route 24 through Hanford was closed to traffic during World War II, and never reopened?
... that in 1833, Ursula Newell Emerson drew some of the earliest surviving manuscript maps of Hawaii for instructional use?
... that Cristin Milioti describes her character Nanette Cole from the Black Mirror episode "USS Callister" as "a woman in charge [fighting] against a small-minded, misogynist bully"?
... that Emilio Álvarez Icaza will enter the Mexican Senate as an independent, refusing to affiliate with any of the three parties that supported his candidacy?
... that Willem Adriaan van der Stel introduced the ivy-leaved pelargonium to the Netherlands from South Africa in 1700?
... that the Hindu goddess Matangi is worshipped with the taboo offering of leftovers?

In the news

Nadia Murad

The 43rd Chess Olympiad concludes with China winning both the open and women's sections of the tournament.
Denis Mukwege and Nadia Murad (pictured) are awarded the Nobel Peace Prize "for their efforts to end the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war and armed conflict".
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry is awarded to Frances Arnold for her work on directed evolution of enzymes and to George Smith and Greg Winter for their work on phage display of peptides and antibodies.
Arthur Ashkin, Gérard Mourou and Donna Strickland are awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for their work on laser science.

On this day

October 7

Ezra Cornell

1513 – War of the League of Cambrai: A Venetian army under Bartolomeo d'Alviano was decisively defeated by the Spanish army commanded by Ramón de Cardona and Fernando d'Ávalos.
1800 – The French privateer Robert Surcouf led a 150-man crew to capture the 40-gun, 437-man East Indiaman Kent.
1868 – Cornell University (co-founder Ezra Cornell pictured) in Ithaca, New York, was established, with an initial enrollment of 412 men the next day.
1988 – Near Point Barrow in Alaska, an Iñupiat hunter discovered three gray whales trapped in pack ice, which resulted in an international effort to free them.
2008 – 2008 TC₃ exploded above the Nubian Desert in Sudan, the first time that an asteroid impact had been predicted prior to its entry into the atmosphere as a meteor.

Guru Gobind Singh (d. 1708) · Charles XIII of Sweden (b. 1748) · Beatrice Hutton (d. 1990)

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Today's featured picture

Margaret Lee (1506(?) – 1543(?)) was a sister of the poet Thomas Wyatt, and likely a friend of Queen Anne Boleyn, second wife of Henry VIII of England. She was the daughter of Sir Henry Wyatt and Anne Skinner, and was married to Sir Anthony Lee (d.1549), by whom she had four sons and five daughters. Historians have speculated that she was present during Boleyn's execution.

Painting: Workshop of Hans Holbein.

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