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From today's featured article

SMS Inn, the other Enns-class river monitor

Drava was a river monitor operated by the Royal Yugoslav Navy between 1921 and 1941. Originally built for the Austro-Hungarian Navy as SMS Enns, the monitor fought against the Serbian and Romanian armies during World War I. The ship was transferred to the newly created Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (later Yugoslavia) and renamed Drava in 1920. The vessel remained in service throughout the interwar period. During the invasion of Yugoslavia in April 1941, Drava spent six days shelling airfields near Mohács in Hungary and fought off a small flotilla of Hungarian gunboats. On 12 April, the monitor was attacked by Junkers Ju 87 Stuka dive bombers. One bomb was dropped straight down Drava's funnel and exploded in the engine room, killing 54 of the crew and sinking the vessel; there were only 13 survivors. The base of the Serbian River Flotilla at Novi Sad is named after Drava's last captain, Aleksandar Berić. (This article is part of a featured topic: Ships of the Royal Yugoslav Navy.)

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Did you know ...

Staircase at Polanco metro station

... that the giant piano-shaped staircase (pictured) at Polanco metro station is fully interactive?
... that Edward Parr's slave ship was once surrounded by 10 war canoes?
... that the perpetrators of the Kennin Rebellion surrendered when one of their commanders, a female samurai, was wounded?
... that Max Creutz, director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Museum in Krefeld from 1922, acquired modern art including a painting by Max Ernst and a large collection of Bauhaus creations?
... that in 1981, a customer could have bought a photocopier from an IBM Product Center for $39,000?
... that Nintendo's The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword was designed to be an origin story for the Master Sword?
... that the 1970 board game Blacks & Whites is "strategically designed to make a black win impossible"?
... that Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Rawlins proposed that the Rhodesian Army employ witchdoctors as psychological warfare during the Rhodesian Bush War?

In the news

Alexei Navalny

Russian opposition activist Alexei Navalny (pictured) is awarded the Sakharov Prize.
PAICV candidate José Maria Neves is elected President of Cape Verde.
British Member of Parliament Sir David Amess dies after being stabbed during a constituency meeting.
Severe Tropical Storm Kompasu kills 40 people in the Philippines and Hong Kong.

On this day

October 21

"Galop infernal" from Orpheus in the Underworld,
popularly used as can-can music

1096 – The Seljuk forces of Kilij Arslan destroyed the army of the People's Crusade as it marched toward Nicaea.
1858 – French composer Jacques Offenbach's operetta Orpheus in the Underworld, featuring the music most associated with the can-can (audio featured), was first performed at the Théâtre des Bouffes-Parisiens in Paris.
1941 – World War II: German soldiers massacred nearly 2,800 Serbs in Kragujevac in reprisal for insurgent attacks in the district of Gornji Milanovac.
1968 – At the height of the Japanese university protests, protestors occupied Shinjuku Station and clashed violently with police.
1994 – North Korea and the United States signed the Agreed Framework to limit the former's nuclear weapons program and to normalize relations between the two countries.

Birger Jarl (d. 1266)
Sims Reeves (b. 1821)
Ursula K. Le Guin (b. 1929)

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Today's featured picture

An mRNA vaccine is a type of vaccine that uses a copy of a molecule known as messenger RNA (mRNA) to produce an immune response. The vaccine transfects molecules of synthetic RNA into dendritic cells, where the vaccine functions as mRNA, causing the cells to build foreign protein that would normally be produced by a pathogen (such as a virus) or by a cancer cell. These protein molecules stimulate an adaptive immune response that teaches the body to identify and destroy the corresponding pathogen or cancer cell. This animated video illustrates how immunization with an mRNA COVID-19 vaccine stimulates an immune response against COVID-19 infection.

Video credit: Swiss Academy of Natural Sciences

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