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From today's featured article

Simon Hatley (1685 – after 1723) was an English sailor involved in two hazardous privateering voyages to the South Pacific Ocean. With his ship beset by storms south of Cape Horn, Hatley shot an albatross, an incident immortalised by Samuel Taylor Coleridge in The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (illustrated). Hatley went to sea in 1708 under Captain Woodes Rogers, but was captured by the Spanish on the coast of Ecuador and was tortured by the Inquisition. Hatley's second voyage, under George Shelvocke, was the source of the albatross incident, recorded in Shelvocke's journal for 1 October 1719, and also ended with his capture by the Spanish, who held him as a pirate for looting a Portuguese ship. Hatley returned to Britain in 1723, though he hastily sailed to Jamaica lest he risk trial for piracy. His fate thereafter is unknown. In 1797, Wordsworth suggested Hatley's shooting of an albatross as the basis of a poem, which Coleridge published in Lyrical Ballads (1798). (Full article...)

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Military Intelligence Corps Band

... that the U.S. Army's Military Intelligence Corps Band (pictured) had a jazz ensemble known as the Cannonball Combo in tribute to Cannonball Adderley, a former U.S. Army trumpet player?
... that Avinash Sable went from running 6 km (3.7 mi) to and from school at age six to running the 3000 metres steeplechase at the 2019 World Athletics Championships?
... that the novel The Ten Thousand Things, earlier rejected by 44 publishers, won the Walter Scott Prize?
... that B. M. Kutty was called to a meeting with Pakistani prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto after writing him a letter from prison?
... that New York City's Rockaways' Playland amusement park was closed because of an eightfold increase in insurance premiums?
... that Adele Zay successfully led a campaign in 1894 for Transylvanian authorities to recognize kindergarten and handicraft teachers so that they were entitled to pensions?
... that the waniguchi gong is named after its resemblance to the mouth of a crocodile or alligator?
... that Swiss athlete Bibi Torriani was the first ice hockey player to recite the Olympic Oath?

In the news

Haze over Jam Gadang in Indonesia

An earthquake strikes Maluku, Indonesia, killing at least 30 people.
During a prolonged period of haze (pictured) over Southeast Asia, more than 800,000 people endure respiratory diseases.
An earthquake in Kashmir kills 38 people and injures more than 700 others.
Astronomers announce that 2I/Borisov is the first verified interstellar comet, ahead of its closest approach to the Sun on 7 December.

On this day

October 1: Unification Day in Cameroon (1961); Independence Day in Tuvalu (1978)

Aerial view of Stanford University

1800 – With the signing of the Third Treaty of San Ildefonso, Spain returned the colonial territory of Louisiana to France in return for territories in the Tuscany area of Italy.
1891 – Stanford University (pictured), founded by railroad magnate and California governor Leland Stanford and his wife Jane on their former farm lands in Palo Alto, California, admitted its first students.
1949 – Chinese Communist Party chairman Mao Zedong publicly proclaimed the establishment of the People's Republic of China, in Beijing's Tiananmen Square.
1989 – Denmark became the first country to legalise civil unions between same-sex couples.
2012 – A ferry collision off Lamma Island, Hong Kong, killed 39 people and injured 92 others.

Frans Floris (d. 1570) · Duncan Edwards (b. 1936) · Brie Larson (b. 1989)

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Kristina Inhof (born 1 October 1988) is an Austrian presenter and sports journalist at ORF, the Austrian national public service broadcaster. She was born in Vienna and grew up in Lower Austria, playing handball for Hypo Niederösterreich during her school years. Inhof graduated with a bachelor's degree in sports science with a focus on sports management at the University of Vienna in 2012. Her presenting career began in 2009, working first for Vienna Online and then for cable television station W24. She was hired by Austrian television broadcaster Puls 4 for the broadcast of the UEFA Champions League in 2012. For several months in 2015, Inhof joined the presenting team of Sky Sport News HD. She has been working exclusively for ORF since 2016, presenting for the football department.

Photograph credit: Julia Engel

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