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Harper Lee in 2007

To Kill a Mockingbird is a novel by Harper Lee (pictured) published in 1960 and considered a classic of modern American fiction. The novel is loosely based on the author's observations of her family and neighbors, as well as an event that occurred near her hometown in 1936, when she was 10 years old. The narrator's father, Atticus Finch, has served as a moral hero for many readers, and a model of integrity for lawyers. As a Southern Gothic novel and a bildungsroman, the primary themes of To Kill a Mockingbird involve racial injustice and the destruction of innocence, but scholars have also noted that Lee addresses the issues of class tensions, courage and compassion, and gender roles in the American Deep South. The book, which won a Pulitzer Prize, is widely taught in schools in English-speaking countries with lessons that emphasize tolerance and decry prejudice. Despite its themes, To Kill a Mockingbird has been the target of various campaigns to have it removed from public classrooms. (Full article...)

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Downtown Serekunda

... that because the capital of The Gambia is on a small island, its population has overflowed into Serekunda (pictured) in the nearby municipality of Kanifing?
... that Nancy S. Steinhardt completed her doctorate on medieval Chinese architecture before she was able to see any in person?
... that much of Archcliffe Fort was demolished in the 1920s to allow for expansion of a railway?
... that Alfred Sully, who led US forces during the Sioux Wars, was married to a Yankton Sioux woman?
... that The Right and the Wrong was the first feature film produced natively in Trinidad and Tobago?
... that a 23-day CBC strike thrust Don Goodwin into the Canadian national spotlight and into "folk-hero status"?
... that the lyric video for an Olivia Rodrigo song included a teaser that she would tour in support of her album Guts?
... that the Cosmere Roleplaying Game surpassed Frosthaven to become the most-funded tabletop game on Kickstarter in August 2024?
... that "Honest Ike" stole more than $200,000 from the Alabama treasury?

In the news

Hurricane Milton path

Hurricane Milton (pictured), one of the fastest-intensifying and most powerful Atlantic hurricanes on record, makes landfall in the U.S. state of Florida.
John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton receive the Nobel Prize in Physics for their research in machine learning with artificial neural networks.
A gang attack on the Haitian town of Pont-Sondé leaves seventy people dead and fifty others injured.
More than twenty people die in flooding and landslides in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

On this day

October 10

Vidyasagar Setu

1846 – English astronomer William Lassell discovered Triton, the largest moon of Neptune.
1933 – In the first proven act of sabotage in the history of commercial aviation, a Boeing 247 operated by United Airlines exploded in mid-air near Chesterton, Indiana, killing all seven people aboard.
1963 – The Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, which prohibits all test detonations of nuclear weapons except for those conducted underground, went into effect.
1973 – U.S. vice president Spiro Agnew resigned after being charged with tax evasion.
1992 – After 20 years of construction, Vidyasagar Setu (pictured), the longest cable-stayed bridge in India, opened, joining Kolkata and Howrah.

Mary of Waltham (b. 1344)
Luang Pu Sodh Candasaro (b. 1884)
Kim Ki-young (b. 1919)
Sarah Lancashire (b. 1964)

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Silver certificates are a type of representative money issued between 1878 and 1964 in the United States as part of its circulation of paper currency. They were produced in response to silver agitation by citizens who were angered by the Coinage Act of 1873, which had effectively placed the United States on a gold standard. Since 1968 they have been redeemable only in Federal Reserve Notes and are thus obsolete, but they remain legal tender at their face value and hence are still an accepted form of currency. These are three banknotes from the 1934 series of silver certificates, designed by the Bureau of Engraving and Printing and comprising the denominations $1, $5 and $10. Each banknote bears a portrait of a different individual, identified above.

Banknote design credit: Bureau of Engraving and Printing

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