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The Pyramid of Sahure is a pyramid complex built in the late-26th to 25th century BC for the Egyptian pharaoh Sahure of the Fifth Dynasty. The main pyramid was built from roughly hewn limestone blocks bound with mud mortar and encased with fine white Tura limestone. Stone fragments believed to belong to the king's basalt sarcophagus are the only remains of the burial that have been found. A mortuary temple is adjacent to the pyramid's east face and to the south is a cult pyramid, constructed similarly to the main pyramid but on a reduced scale. The layout of the complex was adopted by succeeding kings of the Fifth and Sixth Dynasties, marking a milestone in pyramid complex construction. Sahure's mortuary temple became the object of a cult of Sekhmet around the Eighteenth Dynasty. The cult was active through to the Ptolemaic Kingdom. The temple also became the site of a Coptic shrine. The site was first thoroughly excavated by Ludwig Borchardt between March 1907 and 1908. (Full article...)

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They Did Not Expect Him

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... that the Bonin greenfinch is Japan's most endangered bird?
... that Olga Ehrenhaft-Steindler, the first woman to earn a physics doctorate at the University of Vienna, co-founded the first Viennese commercial academy for girls?
... that the earliest representation of the devil might be a mosaic in San Apollinare Nuovo in Ravenna from the 6th century, in the form of a blue angel?
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In the news

Hassan Sheikh Mohamud

Hassan Sheikh Mohamud (pictured) is elected as President of Somalia.
In the United States, ten people are killed in a mass shooting at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York.
Ukraine, represented by Kalush Orchestra with the song "Stefania", wins the Eurovision Song Contest.
Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan inherits the Emirate of Abu Dhabi and becomes President of the United Arab Emirates after the death of Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan.

On this day

May 18: Haitian Flag Day in Haiti (1803); Day of Remembrance for the Victims of Crimean Tatar Genocide in Ukraine and several other countries

The Bath School after the explosions

1302 – Armed insurrectionists massacred the occupying French garrison in Bruges, Flanders, killing approximately 2,000 people.
1695 – An earthquake measuring M_s7.8 struck Shanxi Province in northern China, resulting in at least 52,600 deaths.
1927 – Disgruntled school board treasurer Andrew Kehoe set off explosives with timers and a rifle (aftermath pictured), causing the Bath School disaster in the Bath Consolidated School in Michigan, killing 44 people in the deadliest mass murder in a school in United States history.
1955 – Operation Passage to Freedom, the evacuation of 310,000 Vietnamese civilians, soldiers and non-Vietnamese members of the French Army from communist North Vietnam to South Vietnam following the end of the First Indochina War, ended.
2006 – The Parliament of Nepal unanimously voted to strip King Gyanendra of many of his powers.

Guido Luca Ferrero (b. 1537)
Elijah Craig (d. 1808)
Charles Louis Alphonse Laveran (d. 1922)

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Caroline Spencer (1861–1928) was an American physician and suffragist who campaigned vigorously for women's rights, both in her home state of Colorado and on the national level. Between 1917 and 1919, she was one of many women who became known as the Silent Sentinels, as they stood in front of the White House and carried pickets and banners for their cause. Although it was not illegal to picket, she was arrested on three occasions and imprisoned twice.

Photograph credit: Edmonston, Washington, D.C.; restored by Adam Cuerden

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