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From today's featured article

The painting

The Combat: Woman Pleading for the Vanquished is an oil painting on canvas by English artist William Etty which is inspired by the Elgin Marbles and intended by the artist to provide a moral lesson on "the beauty of mercy". It shows a near-nude warrior whose sword has broken, forced to his knees in front of another near-nude soldier who prepares to inflict a killing blow. A woman, also near-nude, clutches the victorious warrior to beg him for mercy. Unusually for a history painting of the period, it does not depict a scene from history, literature or religion and is not based on an existing artwork. When it was shown at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition of 1825, it attracted praise from critics for its technical excellence, its fusion of the styles of different schools of painting, and its subject matter. It was later bought by fellow artist John Martin and in 1831 he sold it on to the Royal Scottish Academy. It was transferred in 1910 to the National Gallery of Scotland. (Full article...)

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Mugshot of Edgar Matobato

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In the news

Explosions in Tehran

Israel launches multiple airstrikes (aftermath pictured) against Iran's nuclear program and senior military leadership.
Air India Flight 171 crashes in Ahmedabad, India, killing 279 people.
The Beach Boys co-founder Brian Wilson dies at the age of 82.
A shooting at a secondary school in Graz, Austria, leaves eleven people dead.
At the Tony Awards, Purpose wins the Best Play and Maybe Happy Ending wins the Best Musical.

On this day

June 15: Trinity Sunday (2025)

Sallie Gardner at a Gallop

1215 – King John of England and a group of rebel barons agreed on the text of Magna Carta, an influential charter of rights.
1800 – War of the Second Coalition: The signing of the Convention of Alessandria brought temporary peace between France and Austria.
1878 – Eadweard Muybridge took a series of photographs to prove that all four feet of a horse leave the ground when it gallops (animation pictured), which became the basis of motion pictures.
1944 – World War II: The United States Army Air Forces began its first air raid on the Japanese archipelago, although little damage was caused.
1996 – The Troubles: The Provisional Irish Republican Army detonated a truck bomb in the commercial centre of Manchester, England, injuring more than 200 people and causing widespread damage to buildings.

Lisa del Giocondo (b. 1479)
Adam Eckfeldt (b. 1769)
James K. Polk (d. 1849)
Hoshi (b. 1996)

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Today's featured picture

Magna Carta (An Embroidery) is a 2015 work by English installation artist Cornelia Parker. The artwork is an embroidered representation of the complete text and images of an online encyclopedia article for Magna Carta, as it appeared in English Wikipedia on 15 June 2014, the 799th anniversary of the document. The hand-stitched embroidery is 1.5 metres (5') wide and nearly 13 metres (42') long. The embroidery formed part of an exhibition celebrating the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta on 15 June 2015. It was displayed in the Entrance Hall of the British Library from 15 May to 24 July 2015.

Embroidery credit: Cornelia Parker; Scanned by British Library; edited by Bammesk

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