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Marble bust of Scipio, 2nd century BC

The battle of New Carthage, part of the Second Punic War, took place in early 209 BC when a Roman army under Publius Scipio (bust pictured) assaulted New Carthage, held by a Carthaginian garrison under Mago. Late in 210 BC Scipio took command of Roman forces in Iberia (modern Spain and Portugal) and decided to strike at the regional centre of Carthaginian power: its capital, New Carthage. He marched on the city and immediately attacked it. After defeating a Carthaginian force outside the walls, he pressed attacks on the east gate and the walls. Both were repulsed, but later that day Scipio renewed them. Hard-pressed, Mago moved men from the north wall, overlooking a broad, shallow lagoon. Anticipating this, a force of 500 men waded the lagoon to scale the north wall unopposed. They fought their way to the east gate, opened it from inside and let in their comrades. The city fell and became a logistics centre for the Roman war effort. By 206 BC the Carthaginians had been expelled from Iberia. (Full article...)

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Did you know ...

Sheet music for The Sleeping Beauty and the Beast (1901)

... that composer Frederick Solomon adapted several British pantomimes into Broadway musicals, including The Sleeping Beauty and the Beast (sheet music pictured)?
... that although his leg was shortened by 5 cm (2.0 in) following a battlefield injury, Raoul Augereau continued his military service?
... that the extinct genus Mixtotherium, meaning 'mixed beast', has traits of both extinct primates and hyraxes?
... that before Sean Jackson won three Ivy League basketball championships, he won high school state championships in both baseball and basketball?
... that Aaron Bushnell said that his action of setting himself on fire was less extreme than "what people have been experiencing in Palestine at the hands of their colonizers"?
... that Prince Hubertus is the heir apparent to the head of the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, a royal dynasty to which Elizabeth II belonged?
... that the album Dariacore took inspiration from Internet memes?
... that Francis Fogarty, who went on to manage an NFL franchise for nearly two decades, was taken prisoner by the Nazis in World War II but managed to escape while wounded?
... that men of a Namibian tribe "share" their wives with visitors?

In the news

Wreckage of the Francis Scott Key Bridge

The Francis Scott Key Bridge in the U.S. city of Baltimore collapses (wreckage pictured) after being hit by a container ship.
Bassirou Diomaye Faye is elected President of Senegal.
A mass shooting and explosions kill at least 139 people at the Crocus City Hall in Krasnogorsk, Russia.
Following the Indonesian general election, Prabowo Subianto wins the presidential election, and the Democratic Party of Struggle wins the most votes in the legislative election.

On this day

March 27: Day of the Union of Bessarabia with Romania (1918)

Ball-and-stick model of sildenafil

1884 – Outraged by a jury's decision to convict a man of manslaughter instead of murder, a mob in Cincinnati, Ohio, began three days of rioting.
1899 – Philippine–American War: American forces defeated troops commanded by Philippine president Emilio Aguinaldo at the Battle of Marilao River.
1998 – The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the drug sildenafil (chemical structure pictured), better known by the trade name Viagra, for use as a treatment for erectile dysfunction, the first pill to be approved for this condition in the United States.
1999 – During the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, an Army of Yugoslavia unit shot down a U.S. Air Force F-117 stealth aircraft.
2020 – North Macedonia became a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

Jonathan Jennings (b. 1784)
Doug Wilkerson (b. 1947)
Elisheva Bikhovski (d. 1949)
T. Sailo (d. 2015)

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Today's featured picture

The Bünting cloverleaf map is a historic mappa mundi drawn by the German theologian and cartographer Heinrich Bünting. The map was published in his book Itinerarium Sacrae Scripturae in 1581. The map depicts the three continents of the Old World, Europe, Africa and Asia, as three leaves forming the shape of a clover, with Jerusalem at the centre. The three continents include captions for some of their countries and illustrations of cities. The clover is surrounded by the ocean, with its surface including illustrations of sea creatures, monsters, and a ship. England and Denmark are represented as two island-shapes above Europe's leaf, while the Americas are shown as a mostly unrevealed shape in the lower left corner, captioned Die Neue Welt (the New World).

Map credit: Heinrich Bünting

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