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From today's featured article

Rochester Castle

William de Corbeil (c. 1070 – 1136) was an Archbishop of Canterbury, and the first Augustinian canon to become an archbishop in England. Born at Corbeil, south of Paris, he was educated as a theologian. In 1123 he was elected to the See of Canterbury. Throughout his archbishopric, William was embroiled in a dispute with Thurstan, the Archbishop of York, over the primacy of Canterbury. As a temporary solution, the pope appointed William the papal legate for England, giving him powers superior to those of York. He presided over three legatine councils, which condemned the purchase of benefices or priesthoods and admonished the clergy to be celibate. He oversaw construction of the keep of Rochester Castle (pictured), the tallest Norman-built keep in England. Towards the end of his life William crowned Count Stephen of Boulogne as King of England, despite his oath to the dying King Henry I that he would support the succession of Henry's daughter, the Empress Matilda. (Full article...)

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Did you know...

Lisa Gordon-Hagerty

... that Lisa Gordon-Hagerty (pictured), head of the U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration, once said, "I have more important things to do than advise Nicole Kidman"?
... that the Northern Ireland Assembly has not sat for more than two years, partly because of disagreements over an Irish Language Act?
... that suspected drug lord Raúl Hernández Barrón claimed to be a policeman to avoid being arrested?
... that Kylie Minogue was dropped as an act by Geffen Records after her 1989 album Enjoy Yourself failed to find an audience in the United States?
... that Nadja Malacrida said in a Vim advertisement that it was "no use having new ideas of decoration if you have old ideas of dirt"?
... that KTKN in Ketchikan, Alaska, was one of just six new radio stations authorized in the United States in 1942, due to a wartime freeze order?
... that Song Myung-soon was the first woman South Korean army general from a combat arm?
... that at the 2010 World Team Championship pool event, a first-to-six-racks playoff match was won by Daryl Peach after 52 racks?

In the news

Abiy Ahmed

Former cosmonaut Alexei Leonov, the first person to conduct a spacewalk, dies at the age of 85.
Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed (pictured) is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts in easing the long-standing tensions between Ethiopia and Eritrea.
Following the 2018 cancellation, the 2018 Nobel Prize in Literature is awarded to Olga Tokarczuk and the 2019 prize is awarded to Peter Handke.
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry is awarded to John B. Goodenough, M. Stanley Whittingham, and Akira Yoshino for the development of lithium-ion batteries.

On this day

October 12: National Day in Spain (1492)

Pervez Musharraf

1871 – The Criminal Tribes Act entered into force in British India, giving law enforcement sweeping powers to arrest, control, and monitor the movements of the members of ethnic or social communities that were defined as "habitually criminal".
1890 – The Uddevalla Suffrage Association was founded in Uddevalla, Sweden, with the purpose of bringing about universal suffrage.
1917 – First World War: New Zealand troops suffered more than 2,000 casualties, including more than 800 deaths, in the First Battle of Passchendaele, making it the nation's largest loss of life in one day.
1979 – Typhoon Tip, the largest and most intense tropical cyclone ever recorded, reached a worldwide record-low sea-level pressure of 870 mbar (25.69 inHg) in the western Pacific Ocean.
1999 – Pakistani general Pervez Musharraf (pictured) led a military coup against the government of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.

Nicholas Brend (d. 1601) · Kamini Roy (b. 1864) · Wilt Chamberlain (d. 1999)

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Today's featured picture

Portrait of a Man with a Blue Chaperon is a very small oil-on-panel portrait of an unidentified man attributed to the Early Netherlandish painter Jan van Eyck. The painting was commissioned and completed sometime around 1430. It contains a number of elements typical of van Eyck's secular portraits, including a slightly oversized head, a dark and flat background, forensic attention to the small details and textures of the man's face, and illusionistic devices. It had long been thought that the ring held in the man's right hand was meant as an indication of his profession as a jeweler or goldsmith and so the painting was long titled on variants of such. More recently, the ring is interpreted as an emblem of betrothal and the titles given by various art historians and publications since are usually more descriptive of the colour or form of the headdress.

The painting was attributed to van Eyck in the late 19th century, but this was repeatedly challenged by some art historians until a 1991 cleaning when infrared photography revealed an underdrawing and methods of handling of oil that were unmistakably van Eyck's. Prior to 1948, the panel belonged to the Brukenthal National Museum in Sibiu, Romania. That year, the new Communist regime seized the panel, along with eighteen others it considered the museum's most valuable holdings, and gave it to the National Museum of Art of Romania in Bucharest. At the end of 2006, in time for Sibiu's stint as European Capital of Culture, the works were returned to the Brukenthal Museum.

Painting credit: Jan van Eyck

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