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From today's featured article

The Pacific swift (Apus pacificus) is a bird that breeds in eastern Asia. This swift is strongly migratory, spending the northern hemisphere's winter in a wide range of habitats in Southeast Asia and Australia. The general shape and blackish plumage recall its relative, the common swift, from which it is distinguished by a white rump band and heavily marked underparts. Its main call is a screech typical of its family. It breeds in sheltered locations such as caves and rock crevices, or under the eaves of houses. The nest is a half-cup of dry grass and other fine material that is gathered in flight, cemented with saliva and attached to a vertical surface. Two or three white eggs are incubated for about seventeen days before hatching. Like all swifts, the Pacific swift feeds exclusively on insects caught in flight. The species has a large population that occurs as far afield as the US and New Zealand, and rarely in Europe. (Full article...)

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Did you know ...

Memorial to the victims of
Leitmeritz concentration camp

... that Leitmeritz concentration camp (memorial pictured) was not liberated, but dissolved by the German Instrument of Surrender?
... that Edith Hern Fossett, one of Thomas Jefferson's slaves, was taught French cuisine in the White House and became the head chef at Monticello?
... that before becoming a passenger ferry, the MV Star of Malta made a round-the-world cruise, belonged to a Dominican Republic dictator, and served in the United States Navy?
... that Lin Zonghu was China's first graduate student to major in boilers?
... that no fungi or algae are listed as endangered or threatened by the Illinois Endangered Species Protection Board?
... that the 16-piece Detroit News Orchestra was the first symphonic orchestra in the world organized specifically to play on radio?
... that the Fatimid military commander Dirgham abandoned his pupil Ruzzik ibn Tala'i, the vizier, to be deposed and killed by Shawar, only to overthrow the latter a few months later?
... that the short story "I Sexually Identify as an Attack Helicopter", intended to subvert a transphobic Internet meme, was retracted after accusations of transphobia?

In the news

Sam Mendes

At the British Academy Film Awards, 1917 wins Best Film and six other awards, including Best Director for Sam Mendes (pictured).
In American football, the Kansas City Chiefs defeat the San Francisco 49ers to win the Super Bowl.
The United Kingdom leaves the European Union and begins an eleven-month transition period.
The World Health Organization declares the outbreak of respiratory disease from a novel coronavirus to be a Public Health Emergency of International Concern.

On this day

February 4: Independence Day in Sri Lanka (1948)

Patty Hearst during a bank robbery

960 – Emperor Taizu came to power in China, initiating the Song dynasty that eventually lasted for more than three centuries.
1797 – The Riobamba earthquake, the most powerful in Ecuador's history, devastated Riobamba and many other cities, causing at least 6,000 casualties.
1945 – World War II: U.S. forces liberated the Santo Tomas Internment Camp in Manila, the largest of the Japanese internment camps in the Philippines.
1974 – American newspaper heiress and socialite Patty Hearst (pictured) was kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army, which she later joined, in one of the most well-known cases of Stockholm syndrome.
2008 – The London low emission zone, governing what types of vehicles may enter Greater London, came into operation.

Rabanus Maurus (d. 856) · Oliver Ames (b. 1831) · Betty Friedan (b. 1921)

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Today's featured picture

Rosa Parks (February 4, 1913 – October 24, 2005) was an American activist in the civil rights movement, best known for her pivotal role in the Montgomery bus boycott. On December 1, 1955, in Montgomery, Alabama, Parks rejected a bus driver's order to relinquish her seat in the "colored section" to a white passenger after the whites-only section was filled, inspiring the African-American community to boycott the Montgomery buses for more than a year. Her act of defiance and the boycott became important symbols of the civil rights movement and resistance to racial segregation. After her conviction for disorderly conduct, her appeal became bogged down in the state courts, but the federal Montgomery bus lawsuit, Browder v. Gayle, succeeded in overturning bus segregation in November 1956. Upon her death, Parks became the first woman to lie in honor in the U.S. Capitol rotunda. California and Missouri commemorate Rosa Parks Day on the anniversary of her birth.

This photograph of Parks being fingerprinted was taken on February 22, 1956, when she was arrested again, along with 73 others, after a grand jury indicted 113 African Americans for organizing the Montgomery bus boycott.

Photograph credit: Associated Press; restored by Adam Cuerden

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