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The Shadow was an American pulp magazine published by Street & Smith from 1931 to 1949. Each issue contained a novel about The Shadow, a mysterious crime-fighting figure who spoke the line "Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows" in radio broadcasts of stories from Street & Smith's Detective Story Magazine. For the first issue, dated April 1931, Walter Gibson wrote the lead novel, The Living Shadow. Sales were strong, and Street & Smith soon changed it from quarterly to monthly publication, and then to twice-monthly, with the lead novels written by Gibson. From 1946 to 1948, the novels were by Bruce Elliott, who made The Shadow mostly a background figure. Gibson returned to Street & Smith and resumed writing in 1948, but in 1949 the firm ended its remaining pulp titles, including The Shadow. The success of The Shadow made it very influential, and many other single-character pulps soon appeared, featuring a lead novel in every issue about the magazine's main character. (Full article...)

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Did you know ...

"Ike for President"

... that Disney once created a political advertisement for Dwight D. Eisenhower (featured)?
... that the first New Testament in English was printed by Peter Schöffer the Younger in Worms?
... that at WOPR, a high-school radio station in Michigan, DJs were forced to change the music styles they played every two weeks?
... that Chanson à bouche fermée, a 1933 choral piece composed by Jehan Alain, is sung without text and with a closed mouth?
... that Carol Van Strum, an environmental activist who wrote the book A Bitter Fog, accumulated 20,000 documents across 40 years that revealed corporate and government cover-ups?
... that the Cook Landing Site also commemorates the Māori who landed in New Zealand four centuries or more before Cook did?
... that Diane Burns's Alphabet Serenade provides an early critique of the gentrification of the Lower East Side?
... that visitors to the Museum of Sexual Cultures can make offerings to a statue of Priapus?

In the news

Imran Khan

The Prime Minister of Pakistan, Imran Khan (pictured), is removed from office by a motion of no-confidence.
The United Nations General Assembly adopts a resolution suspending Russia from the UN Human Rights Council.
Protests in Peru against inflation and the policies of President Pedro Castillo result in at least nine deaths and the looting of the Supreme Court's offices.
An estimated 300 civilians in Moura, Mali, are reportedly killed by government forces during a five-day siege.

On this day

April 11

Nevill Ground's cricket pavilion after the arson attack

1241 – Mongol invasion of Europe: Mongol forces led by Batu Khan and Subutai defeated the army of King Béla IV at the Battle of Mohi near the river Sajó, a key victory in their first invasion of Hungary.
1814 – The Treaty of Fontainebleau was signed, ending the War of the Sixth Coalition, and forcing Napoleon to abdicate as ruler of France and sending him into exile on Elba.
1913 – The cricket pavilion at the Nevill Ground was destroyed in an arson attack (damage pictured) that was attributed to militant suffragettes as part of a country-wide campaign co-ordinated by the Women's Social and Political Union.
1968 – Rudi Dutschke, the most prominent leader of the German student movement, survived an assassination attempt, which led to the largest protests to that date in Germany.
2002 – In a coup attempt, members of the Venezuelan military detained President Hugo Chávez and demanded his resignation.

Christopher Smart (b. 1722)
Percy Lavon Julian (b. 1899)
Muhammad Kamaruzzaman (d. 2015)

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From today's featured list

Gelati Monastery

The country of Georgia has four sites on the list of World Heritage Sites, and a further fourteen on the tentative list. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) designates World Heritage Sites of outstanding universal value to cultural or natural heritage which have been nominated by countries which are signatories to the UNESCO World Heritage Convention, established in 1972. Georgia ratified the convention on 4 November 1992. The first two Georgian sites inscribed on the list were the Historical Monuments of Mtskheta and the site comprising Bagrati Cathedral and Gelati Monastery (pictured), in 1994. However, due to major reconstruction detrimental to its integrity and authenticity, Bagrati Cathedral was placed on the List of World Heritage in Danger in 2010 and then delisted as a World Heritage Site in 2017. Upper Svaneti was listed in 1996 and the most recent site listed was the Colchic Rainforests and Wetlands, in 2021. The latter is the only site of natural heritage in Georgia, the other three are of cultural heritage. (Full list...)

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The northern lapwing (Vanellus vanellus), also known as the peewit, is a species of bird in the family Charadriidae, the plovers, dotterels and lapwings. It is a wader that breeds on cultivated land and other short vegetation habitats. It has a distribution across much of the temperate Palearctic realm and is highly migratory. At least in parts of its range, there have been population declines due to changes in agricultural practices.

Photograph credit: Andreas Trepte

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