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The golden swallow (Tachycineta euchrysea) is found in Hispaniola and Jamaica mainly in isolated montane forests of Hispaniolan pine. The Jamaican subspecies is likely extinct, perhaps through predation by mammals and habitat loss, and the Hispaniolan subspecies is considered to be vulnerable by the IUCN. This is a small swallow with mainly copper-bronze upperparts and white underparts. The legs, feet, and irises are dark brown, and the bill is black. The extant subspecies differs from the Jamaican form in having a more forked tail and bluer upperparts. The female is similar, but with mottled grey-brown on the breast, and occasionally on the throat and undertail. In Hispaniola, this swallow breeds from April to July, laying a clutch consisting of two to four white eggs in a cup nest in Hispaniolan pine, in caves or under eaves. It is an aerial insectivore, usually foraging up to 20 m (66 ft) above the ground. (Full article...)

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Map of the Holy Land published in 1620–21

... that engraver Abraham Goos and merchant Jacob ben Abraham Zaddiq were responsible for the first map of the Holy Land printed in Hebrew (pictured)?
... that Fresh Off the Boat is the longest-running Asian-American family sitcom in television history?
... that after a knee injury at the age of 12, ballet dancer Akane Takada waited more than a year to physically grow enough for corrective surgery?
... that the Carnegie Building in Atlanta was designed by G. Lloyd Preacher, who moved his offices to the building after its completion?
... that Scottish screenwriter Krysty Wilson-Cairns, who co-wrote the Academy Award–nominated screenplay for the World War I film 1917, once wrote a short story about killer guinea pigs?
... that the locally scarce bird's eye primrose grows at Cow Myers in North Yorkshire?
... that the bypassing of Nizar in the Fatimid caliphal succession, and his subsequent revolt and execution, led to a split in the Isma'ili branch of Shia Islam that lasts to this day?
... that a 1986 contest by radio station KXUS jammed all telephone circuits in Springfield, Missouri, for an hour?

In the news

Billie Eilish

At the Grammy Awards, Billie Eilish (pictured) wins the major categories of Best New Artist, and Song, Record, and Album of the Year.
American former basketball player Kobe Bryant, his daughter Gianna, and seven others die in a helicopter crash near Los Angeles.
An earthquake in Elazığ, Turkey, kills more than forty people and injures more than a thousand others.

On this day

January 30: Martyrs' Day in India

Attempted assassination of Andrew Jackson

1661 – Two years after his death, Oliver Cromwell's remains were exhumed for a posthumous execution and his head was placed on a spike above Westminster Hall in London, where it remained until 1685.
1835 – Richard Lawrence became the first person to attempt to assassinate a sitting U.S. president when he failed to kill Andrew Jackson at the U.S. Capitol (assassination attempt pictured) and was subdued by the crowd.
1945 – World War II: Allied forces liberated more than 500 prisoners of war from a Japanese POW camp near Cabanatuan in the Philippines.
2000 – Kenya Airways Flight 431 crashed into the Atlantic Ocean near Ivory Coast shortly after takeoff, killing 169 on board.

Rudolf Caracciola (b. 1901) · Patrick Heron (b. 1920) · Professor Longhair (d. 1980)

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Franklin D. Roosevelt (January 30, 1882 – April 12, 1945) was an American politician who served as the 32nd president of the United States. Following an illness in 1921, he was left permanently paralyzed from the waist down, but he was careful never to be seen using his wheelchair in public. Returning to public life, Roosevelt served two terms as Governor of New York before becoming U.S. president in 1933 at the height of the Great Depression. By the time his second term as president concluded in 1941, World War II had started and he was re-elected in 1940 and 1944. In 1945, he suffered a massive intracerebral hemorrhage and died in office shortly before the end of the war. Roosevelt has been rated by scholars as one of the three greatest U.S. presidents.

This picture is a gelatin silver print of a photograph of Roosevelt, taken by Italian photographer Vincenzo Laviosa around 1932. The print is in the collection of the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles.

Photograph credit: Vincenzo Laviosa; restored by Yann Forget

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