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From today's featured article

Market square of Dęblin during the German occupation

Thousands of Jews lived in the towns of Dęblin and Irena in central Poland before World War II. In September 1939, the town was captured in the German invasion of Poland and the persecution of Jews began with drafts into forced labor and the start of a Judenrat. An open ghetto was made in Irena and its inhabitants worked on labor projects for Dęblin Fortress, the railway, and the Luftwaffe. Beginning in May 1941, Jews were sent to labor camps around Dęblin from the Opole and Warsaw ghettos. Conditions in the ghetto worsened due to epidemics of typhus and dysentery. The first deportation was on 6 May 1942 and took around 2,500 Jews to the Sobibór extermination camp. A week later, two thousand Jews arrived from Slovakia and hundreds more from nearby ghettos. In October, the Irena ghetto was liquidated; about 2,500 Jews were deported to the Treblinka extermination camp while some 1,400 Jews were retained as inmates of forced-labor camps. On 27 July 1944, the camp was liberated by the Red Army. (Full article...)

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Did you know ...

John Deere World Headquarters

... that a lake at the John Deere World Headquarters (pictured) is used for air conditioning?
... that a 16th-century painting is based on a sultan's description of himself as a god?
... that Idaho's Ridgevue High School collaborated with a local museum to select their mascot, which honors the P-40 Warhawk World War II fighter plane?
... that volunteers at Takahanga Marae served more than 10,000 meals in the week following the 2016 Kaikōura earthquake?
... that Mary Scott, Countess of Deloraine once pulled off the headdress of a court rival and declared "Look at her, do you see how bald she is"?
... that Arizona voters rejected a 2010 ballot measure by just 194 votes out of more than 1.5 million cast?
... that a 90-year-old woman has cared for more than 10,000 animals at her sanctuary?
... that the avian motifs in Alexander McQueen's La Dame Bleue were a celebration of his deceased mentor Isabella Blow and their mutual love of birds?
... that Dario Toffenetti described his spaghetti as "one hundred yards of happiness"?

In the news

Iliana Iotova

Iliana Iotova (pictured) becomes the first female president of Bulgaria following the resignation of Rumen Radev.
Vietnam's Communist Party Congress re-elects Tô Lâm as General Secretary, the most powerful position in the one-party state.
Italian fashion designer Valentino, founder of his eponymous fashion house, dies at the age of 93.
Wildfires in Chile leave more than 20 people dead.

On this day

January 27

Star chart of Ursa Minor

1343 – Clement VI issued the papal bull Unigenitus, justifying the power of the pope and the use of indulgences.
1726 – J. S. Bach led the first performance of Alles nur nach Gottes Willen, BWV 72, concluding his third Christmas season in Leipzig on the Third Sunday after Epiphany.
1785 – The University of Georgia, the oldest state-chartered public university in the United States, was founded.
1996 – Mahamane Ousmane, the first democratically elected president of Niger, was deposed by Colonel Ibrahim Baré Maïnassara in a military coup d'état.
2011 – Astronomers documented H1504+65, a white dwarf in Ursa Minor (chart pictured) with the hottest surface temperature known at the time, at 200,000 kelvins (360,000 °F).

Johann Nikolaus von Hontheim (b. 1701)
Sasaki Tōichi (b. 1886)
Giuseppe Verdi (d. 1901)
Victoria Ocampo (d. 1979)

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Today's featured picture

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (27 January 1756 – 5 December 1791) was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical period. Despite his short life, his rapid pace of composition and proficiency from an early age resulted in more than 800 works representing virtually every Western classical genre of his time. Many of these compositions are acknowledged as pinnacles of the symphonic, concertante, chamber, operatic, and choral repertoire. Mozart is widely regarded as one of the greatest composers in the history of Western music, with his music admired for its "melodic beauty, its formal elegance and its richness of harmony and texture". The oil painting, titled Portrait of the Mozart Family, is traditionally attributed to Johann Nepomuk della Croce and was painted around 1780. In the foreground, the painting depicts Mozart and his sister Maria Anna together playing a fortepiano, and their father Leopold holding a violin. In the background, their recently deceased mother Anna Maria is depicted in a framed portrait alongside a sculpture of Apollo playing a lyre. The painting was considered by Maria Anna to have the most authentic portrait of her brother, and has inspired further depictions of Mozart. It is currently in the collection of the Tanzmeisterhaus Salzburg.

Painting credit: attributed to Johann Nepomuk della Croce

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