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From today's featured article

Bruce Springsteen

"I'm Goin' Down" is a rock song written and performed by American singer Bruce Springsteen (pictured). The song was recorded with the E Street Band on May 12–13, 1982, and was released on August 27, 1985, by Columbia Records as the sixth single from his 1984 album Born in the U.S.A. Although Springsteen had changing ideas about the songs to put on the album, "I'm Goin' Down" was ultimately selected for inclusion. The recording is based on an energetic band performance that gives prominence to a heavy drum sound. The lyrics focus on sexual frustration in a deteriorating relationship. The single reached number 9 in the United States and the top 30 in Sweden, Canada, and Italy. On the album's release, the song was praised by critics for the band's musicianship and Springsteen's vocals and lyrics. Later it received favorable rankings in retrospectives of Springsteen's career, among which was an NME list calling it his fourth-best song. (Full article...)

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Did you know ...

Sign Union flag

... that French deafblind artist Arnaud Balard created the Sign Union flag (pictured) in 2013 to promote the global unity of deaf people?
... that after the ANT catalog of espionage tools by the National Security Agency was leaked to the public, the tools were implemented as open-source hardware and software?
... that as a young girl, Countess Ladislaja Harnoncourt was thought to be uneducatable and was nicknamed the "wild Laja"?
... that during a promotional tour of Matt & Kim's third album Sidewalks, it was played on the public speaker system of the venue before each show began but none of its tracks were on the setlist?
... that Brian Fawcett, who would have turned 78 today, taught English to inmates before becoming a full-time writer?
... that Iowa radio station KTFC was partially powered by a wind turbine that the owner had bought from an Arizona wind farm?
... that many places in the United Kingdom were racially segregated and non-white customers were banned from using spaces and facilities, even though the law never officially permitted such a colour bar?
... that 19th-century Polish ethnographer Zorian Dołęga-Chodakowski travelled the countryside as a "wild man" and later appeared as a literary character?

In the news

Sagittarius A*

Sagittarius A* (pictured), the supermassive black hole at the centre of the Milky Way galaxy, is imaged by the Event Horizon Telescope.
Bongbong Marcos is elected as President of the Philippines alongside his vice-presidential running mate, Sara Duterte.
In horse racing, Rich Strike wins the Kentucky Derby.
A gas explosion at the Hotel Saratoga in Havana, Cuba, kills at least 43 people.

On this day

May 13

Julian of Norwich

1373 – The English mystic Julian of Norwich (statue pictured) recovered from a severe illness during which she experienced a series of intense visions of Christ, which she later described in the first known English-language book written by a woman.
1861 – The Australian astronomer John Tebbutt discovered the Great Comet of 1861, through the tail of which the Earth passed later that year.
1913 – The Russian inventor Igor Sikorsky flew the self-designed Russky Vityaz, the world's first four-engine fixed-wing aircraft.
1972 – The Troubles: A car bomb planted by Ulster loyalists exploded outside a crowded pub in Belfast, Northern Ireland, beginning two days of gun battles between the British Army, the Provisional Irish Republican Army, and the Ulster Volunteer Force.
1992 – Li Hongzhi introduced the Falun Gong movement at a public lecture in Changchun, China.

Cornelis Schut (b. 1597)
Lorna Hodgkinson (b. 1887)
H. Trendley Dean (d. 1962)

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From today's featured list

Skyline of downtown Spokane

As of January 2022, there are 40 high-rise buildings in the U.S. city of Spokane, located in the east of the state of Washington. The city is the metropolitan center of the Inland Northwest region of the United States, where it serves as a hub for retail trade and services. High-rise development began in 1891, shortly after the Great Spokane Fire of 1889, with the completion of the 146-foot (45 m) Review Building featuring a traditional brick-and-stone construction. After the advent of steel frame building construction, allowing for increased strength to support more floors, local applications of this technology began showing up in a significant way in the early 20th century in the form of the U.S. Bank Building (built 1910) and the Paulsen Medical and Dental Building (built 1929), both of which became the tallest in the city. The current tallest building in Spokane, surpassing the Paulsen Medical and Dental Building, is the 288-foot-tall (88 m) Bank of America Financial Center, which was completed in 1981 and has held the distinction for 41 years. (Full list...)

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Today's featured picture

The variable oystercatcher (Haematopus unicolor) is a species of wader in the family Haematopodidae, endemic to New Zealand. The plumage ranges from pied through mottled to all black in different parts of the bird's range. They search for food in shallow water as the tides ebb and flow. Food is mainly located visually but when it is dark or the food is obscured, they will probe the substrate with their bill. The diet consists of a range of molluscs, crustaceans, worms and sometimes small fish. This bird was photographed at Point Chevalier in Auckland, New Zealand.

Photograph credit: John Harrison

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