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From today's featured article

Musidora: The Bather 'At the Doubtful Breeze Alarmed', also known as The Bather, is a name given to four nearly identical oil paintings on canvas by English artist William Etty. The paintings illustrate a scene from James Thomson's 1727 poem Summer in which a young man accidentally sees a young woman bathing naked and is torn between his desire to look and his knowledge that he ought to look away. The scene was popular with English artists as it was one of the few legitimate pretexts to paint nudes at a time when the display and distribution of nude imagery was suppressed. Musidora was extremely well received when first exhibited and considered one of the finest works by an English artist. Etty died in 1849 and his work rapidly went out of fashion. At that time, the topic of Musidora itself became a cliche, and from the 1870s Thomson's writings faded into obscurity. Etty's Musidora is likely to have influenced The Knight Errant by John Everett Millais, but otherwise has had little effect. (Full article...)

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Did you know ...

Reconstruction of a rodent head found in Uruguay

... that remains from the largest rodent in history (pictured) were found in Uruguay?
... that Thomas Edison made talking dolls?
... that a 17th-century painting shows a half-naked ascetic in a cave occupying the position of honour, even ahead of the emperor?
... that judge Coral Shaw announced her second retirement live on radio?
... that cave mollies thrive in an environment full of hydrogen sulfide, which is lethal to most animals?
... that the earliest distinguished ancestor of the Tudors served as a diplomat, judge, and military leader to Llywelyn Fawr of Gwynedd?
... that more than 30 percent of Texas voters opposed a 2025 constitutional amendment stating that "parents are the primary decision makers for their children"?
... that Amy Cudden was credited as "Daniel Radcliffe's mum" on Am I Being Unreasonable? due to apparently looking like Harry Potter?
... that Harry S. Truman declined a mayor's suggestion to fire a nuclear bomb at a hurricane?

In the news

Valentino in 2007

Italian fashion designer Valentino (pictured), founder of his eponymous fashion house, dies at the age of 93.
In association football, the Africa Cup of Nations concludes with Senegal defeating Morocco in the final.
A diplomatic crisis over Greenland leads to European troop deployments and tariff threats from the United States.
At least 45 people are killed after two trains collide in Adamuz, Spain.

On this day

January 24: Alasitas in La Paz, Bolivia; Day of the Unification of the Romanian Principalities (1859)

The Hiten spacecraft

AD 41 – Roman emperor Caligula was murdered by Cassius Chaerea and other members of the Praetorian Guard, who proclaimed Claudius to be the new emperor.
771 – Kʼakʼ Tiliw Chan Yopaat dedicated a 65-ton stele, the largest stone known to be quarried by the Maya civilization, at his city of Quiriguá.
1913 – Greek military aviators Michael Moutoussis and Aristeidis Moraitinis performed the first naval air mission in history, with a Farman MF.7 hydroplane.
1961 – A Boeing B-52 Stratofortress carrying two Mark 39 nuclear weapons broke up in mid-air near Goldsboro, North Carolina; one bomb was recovered intact, the other disintegrated.
1990 – Japan launched the Hiten spacecraft (pictured), the first lunar probe launched by a country other than the Soviet Union or the United States.

Solomon Butcher (b. 1856)
Mary Lou Retton (b. 1968)
Wim Umboh (d. 1996)
Joseph Sonnabend (d. 2021)

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Today's featured picture

The redtoothed triggerfish (Odonus niger) is a tropical fish in the family Balistidae, the triggerfishes. It is native to the tropical Indo-Pacific area, including the Red Sea, the African east coast, the Marquesas Islands and the Society Islands, across to southern Japan and the Great Barrier Reef of Australia. Redtoothed triggerfish are normally deep blue or purple with a light blue head. They are omnivorous and mostly opportunistic feeders, with crustaceans as its primary food source. They also feed on zooplankton and algae, and remains of cephalopods and fish have been found in their stomach. This redtoothed triggerfish was photographed off the coast of Anilao in the Philippines.

Photograph credit: Diego Delso

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