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From today's featured article

Jean-François Champollion

The decipherment of ancient Egyptian scripts was accomplished in the early nineteenth century by several European scholars, especially Jean-François Champollion (pictured) and Thomas Young. Egyptian writing, which included the hieroglyphic, hieratic and demotic scripts, ceased to be understood in the fourth and fifth centuries AD. Afterwards, it was believed that Egyptian scripts were exclusively ideographic, representing ideas, rather than phonetic, representing sounds. The Rosetta Stone, discovered in 1799, bore a parallel text in hieroglyphic, demotic and Greek, but deciphering the Egyptian text through its Greek translation proved difficult. Young, building on the work of Antoine-Isaac Silvestre de Sacy and Johan David Åkerblad, identified several phonetic signs in demotic. In the early 1820s Champollion realised the hieroglyphic script had both phonetic and ideographic elements. He identified the meanings of most phonetic hieroglyphs and established much of the grammar and vocabulary of ancient Egyptian. (Full article...)

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Did you know ...

Ulysses S. Grant astride his horse, Cincinnati

... that Ulysses S. Grant (pictured), known for his excellent horsemanship, set a high-jump record at West Point in 1843 that stood for 25 years?
... that Efim Gorodetsky and the "Mints group" were criticised by a fellow Soviet historian for being objective, fact-based, internationalist, and insufficiently partisan?
... that chitons, such as Acanthochitona crinita, are molluscs with a shell composed of eight separate articulating valves?
... that Indian lyricist Gulzar wants his patriotic song "Ae Watan" to become the "song of our nation"?
... that 608 Fifth Avenue was designed to be adaptable for multiple uses due to uncertainty regarding the development of Rockefeller Center around the building?
... that Fred Evans is the most successful Welsh boxer in Olympic history?
... that the Cassington Canal was built by the Duke of Marlborough to connect his lands to the River Thames and the country's network of canals and rivers?
... that Austrian neurologist Adele Juda concluded that Mozart was "psychiatrically normal"?

In the news

Coronaviruses viewed under an electron microscope

In China, a new strain of coronavirus (examples pictured) infects more than nine hundred people, killing at least twenty-six.
Mikhail Mishustin is appointed Prime Minister of Russia following the resignation of Dmitry Medvedev and his cabinet.
Scientists announce that presolar stardust grains in the Murchison meteorite formed five to seven billion years ago, and are the oldest solid material found on Earth to date.

On this day

January 24

James W. Marshall

914 – The Fatimid Caliphate began their first invasion of Egypt, against the Abbasids, which eventually ended in failure.
1848 – James W. Marshall (pictured) discovered gold at Sutter's Mill in Coloma, California, leading to the California Gold Rush.
1978 – The Soviet nuclear-powered satellite Kosmos 954 burned up during atmospheric reentry, scattering radioactive debris across Canada's Northwest Territories.
1990 – Japan launched the Hiten spacecraft, the first lunar probe launched by a country other than the Soviet Union or the United States.
2011 – A North Caucasian jihadist carried out a suicide bombing at Moscow's Domodedovo Airport, killing 37 people.

Richard de Bury (b. 1287) · Signe Rink (b. 1836) · Elie Hobeika (d. 2002)

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From today's featured list

Sheboygan Municipal Auditorium and Armory

There have been 15 defunct National Basketball Association franchises. The National Basketball Association (NBA) is a professional men's basketball league, consisting of thirty teams in North America (twenty-nine in the United States and one in Canada). Nine of the league's defunct teams played in only one NBA season. The Anderson Packers, the original Denver Nuggets, the Indianapolis Jets, the Sheboygan Red Skins (arena pictured), and the Waterloo Hawks had played in the National Basketball League before joining the NBA, while the original Baltimore Bullets had played in the American Basketball League. The Packers, Red Skins, and Hawks left the NBA for the National Professional Basketball League, and are the only defunct teams to have ceased to exist in a league other than the NBA. The original Bullets were the last defunct team to leave the NBA, having left during the 1954–55 season, and are the only defunct team to have won an NBA championship. (Full list...)

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Today's featured picture

Greenbacks were paper currency issued by the Union government from 1862 to 1865, during the American Civil War. Issued in denominations of 1, 2, 5, 10, 20, 50, 100, 500 and 1000 dollars, they were legal tender but were not backed by gold or silver. The obverse of the banknotes was printed in green, black and red, while the reverse was printed in green, giving the notes their popular name of "greenbacks". They were signed by Lucius E. Chittenden, Register of the Treasury, and Francis E. Spinner, Treasurer of the United States.

This picture shows a thousand-dollar greenback issued in 1863, featuring a portrait of Robert Morris, one of the Founding Fathers and the only person to hold the office of superintendent of finance, on the obverse. This banknote is part of the National Numismatic Collection at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History.

Other denominations: $1, $2, $5, $10, $20, $50, $100, $500

Banknote design credit: National Bank Note Company; photographed by Andrew Shiva

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