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From today's featured article

Waterloo Bay massacre
memorial plaque

The Waterloo Bay massacre was a clash between European settlers and Aboriginal Australians that took place on the cliffs of Waterloo Bay near Elliston, South Australia, in late May 1849. Part of the Australian frontier wars, it is likely that it resulted in the deaths of tens or scores of Aboriginal people. In the lead-up, three European settlers were killed by Aboriginal people, and one Aboriginal person was killed and five others were poisoned by European settlers. Local Aboriginal people have oral history traditions that a large-scale massacre occurred. While older European accounts suggest that the event was exaggerated into a myth over time, it has now been concluded that the stories are founded in fact, and that some form of punitive action did take place. In 2017, the District Council of Elliston erected a memorial (pictured) to acknowledge what occurred, and received a national award for their work in memorialising the massacre. (Full article...)

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In the news

Coronavirus pandemic

Netanyahu and Gantz

After seventeen months of stalemate, the Likud and Blue and White parties reach an agreement for Benjamin Netanyahu and Benny Gantz (pictured) to share power in Israel.
A spree attack in Nova Scotia, Canada, leaves twenty-two victims dead.
In the South Korean legislative election, the ruling Democratic Party and their allies increase their majority in the National Assembly.

On this day

May 2: Flag Day in Poland

Brandenburg Gate damaged after the Battle of Berlin

1559 – Presbyterian clergyman John Knox returned from exile to lead the Scottish Reformation.
1889 – The Treaty of Wuchale was signed, ending the Italo-Ethiopian War, but differences in translation later led to another war.
1945 – World War II: General Helmuth Weidling, the German commander of Berlin, surrendered to Soviet forces led by Marshal Georgy Zhukov, ending the Battle of Berlin (aftermath pictured).
1995 – Croatian War of Independence: Serb forces began rocket attacks on the Croatian capital Zagreb, killing 7 people and injuring around 200 others.
2011 – The Conservative Party of Canada won enough seats in the federal election to establish their first majority government.

Marutha of Tikrit (d. 649)
Isabel González (b. 1882)
Dorothea Binz (d. 1947)

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Today's featured picture

Christen Dalsgaard (1824–1907) was a Danish painter and a late student of Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg. He primarily painted genre paintings and Romantic nationalist folk scenes rooted in the grasslands of Jutland. Dalsgaard paid great attention to details, such as folk costumes, the manners and habits of the people, the indoor furnishings, the architecture and landscape. His artistic works, as well as those of his contemporaries, opened the way for the more realistic paintings of the late 1800s.

This picture is an oil-on-canvas painting entitled En rekonvalescent ('A convalescent'), created by Dalsgaard in 1870. The painting, which depicts a girl reading, is now part of the Hirschsprung Collection in Copenhagen.

Painting credit: Christen Dalsgaard

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