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From today's featured article

The Pacific swift (Apus pacificus) is a bird that breeds in eastern Asia. This swift is strongly migratory, spending the northern hemisphere's winter in a wide range of habitats in Southeast Asia and Australia. The general shape and blackish plumage recall its relative, the common swift, from which it is distinguished by a white rump band and heavily marked underparts. Its main call is a screech typical of its family. It breeds in sheltered locations such as caves and rock crevices, or under the eaves of houses. The nest is a half-cup of dry grass and other fine material that is gathered in flight, cemented with saliva and attached to a vertical surface. Two or three white eggs are incubated for about seventeen days before hatching. Like all swifts, the Pacific swift feeds exclusively on insects caught in flight. The species has a large population that occurs as far afield as the US and New Zealand, and rarely in Europe. (Full article...)

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Did you know ...

First-issue stamp of the Ottoman Empire (1863–1865)

... that Mehmet Ismet Başaran's research into the first stamps of the Ottoman Empire (example pictured) was hampered by the loss of the official records?
... that after twelve years of attempts, Kyle Larson won the Chili Bowl Nationals back-to-back in the first two years when he participated under his own team?
... that Pakistani historian Suhail Zaheer Lari and his wife, architect Yasmeen Lari, threatened to elope to Scotland to get married because the legal marriageable age there was lower than in England?
... that the Remsen Cemetery, one of the few remaining private burial grounds on Long Island, contains the remains of an American Revolutionary War colonel and his family members?
... that journalist Charles Mayer proposed an election procedure change in his attempt to become president of the National Boxing Association?
... that See You in the Cosmos, published as a children's book, has adult themes throughout?
... that Spiel nicht mit den Schmuddelkindern, a 1965 album and song that Franz Josef Degenhardt wrote and sang to his guitar, anticipated the opposition of the student movement?
... that although Walt Whitman and Abraham Lincoln never met, Whitman once wrote "I love the President personally"?

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Aung San Suu Kyi

Aung San Suu Kyi (pictured), the State Counsellor of Myanmar, is detained by the military in a coup d'état.
A coordinated short squeeze targeting American hedge funds causes GameStop's stock price to spike.
Kaja Kallas becomes the first female Prime Minister of Estonia, following the resignation of Jüri Ratas.
In Russia, protests against the arrest of Alexei Navalny occur in more than 120 towns and cities.

On this day

February 4

Luke 11:2 in the Codex Sinaiticus

1801 – John Marshall, whose court opinions helped lay the basis for U.S. constitutional law and made the Supreme Court a coequal branch of government, took office as chief justice.
1859 – Constantin von Tischendorf rediscovered the Codex Sinaiticus (text sample pictured), a 4th-century great uncial codex of the Bible in Greek, in Saint Catherine's Monastery, Egypt.
1945 – World War II: U.S. forces liberated the Santo Tomas Internment Camp in Manila, the largest Japanese internment camp in the Philippines.
1974 – The Provisional Irish Republican Army bombed a motor coach carrying off-duty British Armed Forces personnel and their family members, killing twelve people.
1998 – An earthquake registering 5.9 M_W struck northern Afghanistan, triggering landslides that killed over 2,300 people and destroyed around 15,000 homes.

Septimius Severus (d. 211)
Étienne Desmarteau (b. 1873)
Betty Friedan (b. 1921)

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Today's featured picture

The pink-necked green pigeon (Treron vernans) is a species of bird in the dove family, Columbidae, common in Southeast Asia. It is primarily a frugivore, feeding in groups in the mid-canopy on figs and other fruits. It is an important disperser of fruit seeds in forests, and is thought to be one of the species responsible for helping to return many Ficus species to the islands of Krakatoa in Indonesia after the archipelago was largely destroyed in the 1883 eruption. This male pink-necked green pigeon was photographed in Kent Ridge Park, Singapore.

Photograph credit: John Harrison

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