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From today's featured article

Shoom was a weekly all-nighter dance music event held at nightclubs in London, England, between December 1987 and early 1990. It is widely credited with initiating the acid house movement in the UK. Shoom was founded by Danny Rampling and managed by his wife Jenni. It began at a 300-capacity basement gym on Southwark Street in South London. By May 1988 its growing popularity necessitated a move to the larger Raw venue on Tottenham Court Road, Central London, and a switch from Saturday to Thursday nights. Later relocations were to The Park nightclub in Kensington and Busby's venue on Charing Cross Road. The early nights featured Chicago house and Detroit techno, mixed with contemporary pop and post-punk. Its musical and visual culture evolved around the classical hallucinogenic drug LSD and the psychoactive drug MDMA, the latter commonly known in the UK as ecstasy or "E". Shoom closed shortly after open drug use at the club began to attract police attention. By this time, electronic music had crossed into the mainstream as the heavier sounding rave style became popular. (Full article...)

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Did you know ...

Darby Jones in I Walked with a Zombie (1943)

... that film critic Danny Peary described Darby Jones (pictured) as having been "even more typecast than the typical black actor", limited to roles in jungle-themed films?
... that the construction of 666 Fifth Avenue involved cartoon decorations, a papier-mâché Santa Claus, and a 78-by-155-foot (24 by 47 m) American flag that ripped as it was being unfurled?
... that Blanche Zacharie de Baralt was the University of Havana's first woman philosophy graduate and the first person to translate Tagore's poems into Spanish?
... that the volcano Eifuku produces bubbles of liquid carbon dioxide underwater?
... that the construction of WaHu Student Apartments was delayed for one year by Minneapolis's initial rejection of a new location for the blood plasma donation center on the property?
... that the fictional battle Operation Yashima, displayed in the Neon Genesis Evangelion episode "Rei II", inspired a real unofficial campaign in Japan to conserve electricity after the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami?
... that the small Pacific island nation of Tonga, represented by its satellite company Tongasat, claimed nine percent of all viable satellite orbits and became the sixth-largest holder of those orbits?
... that Ralph Fisher bought enslaved people with brass?

In the news

Krystsina Tsimanouskaya

Belarusian sprinter Krystsina Tsimanouskaya (pictured) travels to Poland on a humanitarian visa after attempts by the Belarus Olympic Committee to repatriate her against her will.
In Olympic athletics, Venezuelan Yulimar Rojas breaks a 26-year-old world record in the women's triple jump, and world records are set in men's and women's 400 metres hurdles by Norwegian Karsten Warholm and American Sydney McLaughlin.
Wildfires in southern Turkey kill at least eight people and injure more than 800 others.

On this day

August 8:

Abbey Road, London

1576 – The cornerstone of Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe's observatory Uraniborg was laid on the island of Hven.
1918 – The Battle of Amiens began in Amiens, France, marking the start of the Allied Powers' Hundred Days Offensive through the German front lines that ultimately led to the end of World War I.
1969 – At a zebra crossing in London (pictured), photographer Iain Macmillan took the photo that was used for the cover of the Beatles' album Abbey Road.
2008 – A EuroCity train en route to Prague struck a part of a motorway bridge that had fallen onto the track near Studénka station and derailed, killing 8 people and injuring 64 others.

Matteo Tafuri (b. 1492)
Christoph Ludwig Agricola (d. 1724)
Esther Williams (b. 1921)

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Today's featured picture

Portrait of Wally is a 1912 oil-on-canvas painting by the Austrian artist Egon Schiele, depicting the young model Walburga Neuzil. Although little is known of the subject, she might have been one of his mistresses, and died tragically at a very young age. The painting had been owned by Lea Bondi, a Jewish art dealer who was fleeing the German annexation of Austria and had to sell it in 1939. Restituted to the owners only in 2010, the work now forms part of the collection of the Leopold Museum in Vienna.

Painting credit: Egon Schiele

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