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The hartebeest (Alcelaphus buselaphus) is a large African antelope. Standing just over 1 m (3.3 ft) at the shoulder, it has a typical head-and-body length of 200 to 250 cm (80 to 90 in) and weighs 100 to 200 kg (220 to 440 lb). Coat colour varies among the eight subspecies, from the sandy brown of the western hartebeest to the chocolate brown of Swayne's hartebeest. Both sexes have an elongated forehead, back-curving horns, a short neck, pointed ears, and unusually long legs. Herds typically have up to 300 individuals, grazing mainly on grasses in dry savannas and wooded grasslands, and often moving to more arid places after rainfall. The hartebeest was formerly widespread in Africa, but populations have undergone drastic decline due to habitat destruction, hunting, human settlement, and competition with livestock for food. The species is extinct in Algeria, Egypt, Lesotho, Libya, Morocco, Somalia, and Tunisia, but has been reintroduced into Eswatini and Zimbabwe. (Full article...)

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In the news

Shane Warne

Australian cricketer Shane Warne (pictured) dies at the age of 52.
An attack at a mosque in Peshawar, Pakistan, kills at least 63 people and injures more than 190 others.
The Winter Paralympics open in Beijing, China.
Russia's invasion of Ukraine is condemned by the United Nations General Assembly.
An earthquake in West Sumatra, Indonesia, leaves fourteen people dead.

On this day

March 8: International Women's Day; Aurat March in Pakistan

Anne of Great Britain

1702 – Anne (pictured) became the Queen of England, Scotland and Ireland, succeeding her brother-in-law William III.
1736 – Nader Shah, the founder of the Afsharid dynasty, was crowned Shah of Iran.
1919 – During the Egyptian Revolution, British authorities arrested rebel leader Saad Zaghloul and exiled him to Malta.
1978 – BBC Radio 4 began broadcasting Douglas Adams's The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, a science fiction radio series that was later adapted into novels, a television series, and other formats.
1983 – Cold War: In a speech to the National Association of Evangelicals in Orlando, Florida, U.S. president Ronald Reagan described the Soviet Union as an "evil empire".
2017 – The Azure Window, a limestone natural arch in Gozo, Malta, collapsed during a storm.

Beatrice of Castile (b. 1293)
Frederic Goudy (b. 1865)
José Raúl Capablanca (d. 1942)

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Today's featured picture

Marguerite Durand (1864–1936) was a French stage actress, journalist, and a leading suffragette. In 1888, she gave up her career in the theatre to marry an up-and-coming young lawyer, Georges Laguerre. A friend and follower of the politically ambitious army general Georges Ernest Boulanger, her husband introduced her to the world of radical populist politics and involved her in writing pamphlets for the Boulangist movement. Her newspaper, La Fronde, was founded in 1897 to pick up where Hubertine Auclert's La Citoyenne left off. She had a pet lion, and her collected papers are now housed in the Bibliothèque Marguerite Durand in Paris. This photograph of Durand was taken in 1910.

Photograph credit: Agence Rol; restored by Adam Cuerden

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