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From today's featured article

Metropolitan Police armed response vehicle

Mark Saunders was a British barrister who struggled with depression and alcoholism. On 6 May 2008 he repeatedly fired a shotgun from a window of his home in Markham Square, London. When armed police arrived, Saunders fired at their vehicle (example pictured) and a siege began. Saunders fired twice more and police returned fire, slightly wounding him. Saunders then waved the shotgun out of a window in the direction of a group of police officers; seven officers fired eleven shots, of which at least five struck him. Saunders was pronounced dead at a waiting ambulance. An inquest was held where the jury returned a verdict of lawful killing, but found several flaws in the police handling of the incident. They did not consider that any of these significantly contributed to the outcome. They could not decide whether Saunders had intentionally provoked a lethal response ("suicide by cop"). In 2010, the Metropolitan Police created a unit of senior officers to manage similar incidents. (Full article...)

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In the news

Mark Selby

An elevated section of the Mexico City Metro collapses, leaving at least 25 people dead and more than 70 others injured.
Mark Selby (pictured) wins the World Snooker Championship, defeating Shaun Murphy in the final.
Colombian president Iván Duque Márquez withdraws a proposed tax reform after nationwide protests leave at least 19 people dead.
In horse racing, Medina Spirit wins the Kentucky Derby, earning trainer Bob Baffert a record seventh victory in the race.
In Israel, 45 people are killed in a crowd crush at a religious festival on Mount Meron.

On this day

May 6: National Day of Prayer in the United States (2021)

Grand Palace

1757 – English poet Christopher Smart was admitted to St Luke's Hospital for Lunatics in London, beginning his six-year confinement to mental asylums.
1782 – Construction began on the Grand Palace (pictured) in Bangkok, the official residence of the king of Thailand.
1882 – Irish civil servants Thomas Henry Burke and Lord Frederick Cavendish were stabbed to death by members of the radical Irish National Invincibles in Phoenix Park, Dublin.
1941 – American entertainer Bob Hope performed his first show with the United Service Organizations, beginning a 50-year involvement with them.
1991 – Time magazine published the article "The Thriving Cult of Greed and Power" by Richard Behar criticizing the Church of Scientology, leading to years of legal conflict.

Giaches de Wert (d. 1596)
Victor Grignard (b. 1871)
George Clooney (b. 1961)

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Today's featured picture

The Xbox is a home video game console and the first installment in the Xbox series of video game consoles manufactured by Microsoft. Classified as a sixth-generation console, it was released as Microsoft's first foray into the gaming console market in 2001 in North America, followed by Australia, Europe and Japan in 2002, and was succeeded in 2005 by the Xbox 360. The console is shown here with the S controller, which replaced the console's original as the standard pack-in game controller. The Xbox console is notable for having a built-in hard drive, breakaway controller dongles, and an Ethernet port to support Microsoft's online gaming service, Xbox Live.

Photograph credit: Evan Amos

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