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From today's featured article

Bono as "The Fly"

The Zoo TV Tour (29 February 1992 – 10 December 1993) was a concert tour by Irish rock band U2. Supporting their 1991 album Achtung Baby, the tour visited North America, Europe, Oceania, and Japan. In contrast to U2's previously austere stage setups, Zoo TV shows were elaborate multimedia events, satirising television and media oversaturation by attempting to instill sensory overload in the audience. The stages featured dozens of video screens as well as Trabants as lighting fixtures. Concerts included channel surfing, prank calls, a belly dancer, and transmissions from war-torn Sarajevo. On stage, Bono portrayed characters such as "The Fly" (pictured), "Mirror Ball Man", and "MacPhisto". Zoo TV was the highest-grossing North American tour of 1992 and sold 5.3 million tickets overall. Continuing their 1990s reinvention that began with Achtung Baby and Zoo TV, U2 recorded the album Zooropa during a break in the tour. Many critics gave the tour high praise as a memorable spectacle. (Full article...)

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In the news

Hosni Mubarak

Former President of Egypt Hosni Mubarak (pictured) dies at the age of 91.
Forty-two people are killed and more than two hundred others are injured in riots in North East Delhi, India, during protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act.
Former film producer Harvey Weinstein is convicted of two felony sex crimes.
Shootings in Hanau, Germany, leave eleven people dead and five others wounded.

On this day

February 29

Stanisław II Augustus of Poland

1704 – Queen Anne's War: French and Native American forces raided the English settlement of Deerfield, Massachusetts, killing more than 50 colonists.
1768 – A group of Polish nobles established the Bar Confederation to defend the internal and external independence of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth against Russian influence and King Stanisław II Augustus (portrait shown).
1960 – The deadliest earthquake in Moroccan history struck the city of Agadir, killing at least 12,000 people.
1980 – La Bougie du Sapeur, a humorous French newspaper that is published only on leap day, printed its first issue.
2008 – Belgian author Misha Defonseca admitted that her bestselling memoir about surviving the Holocaust was in fact a literary forgery.

Oswald of Worcester (d. 992) · Ina Coolbrith (d. 1928) · Pedro Sánchez (b. 1972)

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Gioachino Rossini (29 February 1792 – 13 November 1868) was an Italian composer who gained fame for his 39 operas, although he also wrote many songs, some chamber music and piano pieces, as well as sacred music. He set new standards for both comic and serious opera before retiring from large-scale composition while still in his thirties, at the height of his popularity. By the early 1850s, Rossini's mental and physical health had deteriorated; he moved to Paris for the more advanced medical care available, remaining there for the rest of his life. His health improved, and he started composing again. He and his wife established a musical salon in Paris on Saturday evenings, which became internationally renowned.

This photograph of Rossini, by French journalist, caricaturist and photographer Étienne Carjat, was taken in 1865.

Photograph credit: Étienne Carjat; restored by Adam Cuerden

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