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From today's featured article

Fort Concho headquarters building

Fort Concho is a former United States Army installation and a National Historic Landmark located in San Angelo, Texas. It was established in 1867 and was an active military base for 22 years. The fort was the base of the 4th Cavalry from 1867 to 1875, and of the "Buffalo Soldiers" of the 10th Cavalry from 1875 to 1882. The fort was abandoned in June 1889 and over the next twenty years was divided into residences and businesses, with the buildings repurposed or recycled for their materials. Efforts to preserve and restore Fort Concho began in the 1900s and the Fort Concho Museum was founded in 1928. Fort Concho was named a National Historic Landmark District on July 4, 1961, and is one of the best-preserved examples of the military installations built by the US Army in Texas. (Full article...)

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Rib vault of the Heiligen-Geist-Kapelle, Bruck

... that the Heiligen-Geist-Kapelle in Bruck, a unique late-Gothic chapel with a star rib vault (pictured), was almost demolished to make room for a highway?
... that the Rhodesian Independence Bell, a replica of the American Liberty Bell, was inscribed "I toll for justice, civilization and Christianity"?
... that South African American-football kicker Ryan Pretorius wore cleats two sizes too small at Ohio State to simulate kicking barefoot?
... that although Dmitri Shostakovich initially dismissed his own Piano Sonata No. 2 as a "trifle, something impromptu", he would later consider it his most important piano composition?
... that Peter Clavelle did not face either a Republican or a Democratic opponent in the 1991 Burlington mayoral election?
... that María Teresa Sesé wrote 500 romance novels in her native Spanish, then wrote several books in Basque after studying the language for two years?
... that the current Indonesian ambassador to Nigeria, Usra Hendra Harahap, personally led a rescue operation to free Indonesian crew members taken hostage by pirates in June 2020?
... that leopards live in the forest in Turkey?

In the news

Jacob Zuma

A Philippine Air Force C-130 transport aircraft crashes in Sulu, Philippines, killing at least 45 people.
Former South African president Jacob Zuma (pictured) is sentenced to 15 months in prison for contempt of court.
An extreme heat wave kills an estimated 600 people in the Pacific Northwest of North America.
In Saskatchewan, Canada, 751 unmarked graves are discovered at the site of the former Marieval Indian Residential School.

On this day

July 4: Republic Day in the Philippines (1946); Independence Day in the United States (1776)

Bipolar junction transistor

1837 – The Grand Junction Railway, the world's first long-distance railway with steam traction, opened between Birmingham and Newton Junction.
1855 – The first edition of Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass was published, and it went on to become one of the most important collections of American poetry.
1941 – The Holocaust: During the German occupation of Latvia, a number of synagogues in Riga were set on fire, killing many Jews who were confined within.
1951 – William Shockley announced the invention of the junction transistor (example pictured), for which he, John Bardeen, and Walter Houser Brattain later won the Nobel Prize in Physics.

Antoine Daniel (d. 1648)
Hubert Cecil Booth (b. 1871)
Sonia Pierre (b. 1963)

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Today's featured picture

Artists producing art and engraving on United States banknotes began experimenting with copper plates as an alternative to wood engraving in the early 18th century. Applied to the production of paper currency, copper-plate engraving, and later steel engraving, enabled banknote design and printing to rapidly advance during the 19th century. This vignette, engraved by Frederick Girsch of the American Bank Note Company, was first used on the reverse of the one-hundred-dollar denomination of the first series of federally-issued United States banknotes issued in 1863. Produced for the Department of the Treasury's Bureau of Engraving and Printing, the engraving is of John Trumbull's painting Declaration of Independence, depicting the Committee of Five presenting their draft of the United States Declaration of Independence to the Second Continental Congress.

Engraving credit: Frederick Girsch, after John Trumbull; restored by Andrew Shiva

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