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1820 historical world map

History is the systematic study of the past with its main focus on the human past. Historians analyse and interpret primary and secondary sources to construct narratives about what happened and explain why it happened. They engage in source criticism to assess the authenticity, content, and reliability of these sources. It is controversial whether the resulting historical narratives can be truly objective and whether history is a social science rather than a discipline of the humanities. Influential schools of thought include positivism, the Annales school, Marxism, and postmodernism. Some branches of history focus on specific time periods, such as ancient history, particular geographic regions, such as the history of Africa, or distinct themes, such as political, social, and economic history. History emerged as a field of inquiry in antiquity to replace myth-infused narratives, with influential early traditions originating in Greece, China, and later in the Islamic world. (Full article...)

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Did you know ...

Rosa Parks

... that Rosa Parks (pictured) refused to surrender her seat not because she was physically tired, but because she was "tired of giving in"?
... that most of the population of Niamey has consisted of first- and second-generation rural migrants since the city was established?
... that Harry Wunsch, despite appearing "short and fat", was a "savage tackler"?
... that Black dandyism flourished during and after the Harlem Renaissance as a means of self-expression in the African-American community?
... that 17th-century mathematician Carlo Rinaldini studied gall-inducing insects, air convection, and the design of thermometers?
... that the title of Elegies comes from a suite of poems that its director read during the film's pre-production?
... that Saba's airport, known for its short runway, was named after Juancho Yrausquin in honor of his efforts to secure funding?
... that Sculpture Space lets artists create large-scale works in a former metalworking shop?
... that Olympic historians were unconvinced by speculation that an unknown boy coxswain grew up to be a renowned Georgian mathematician?

In the news

Phil Hanson

In motorsport, Robert Kubica, Yifei Ye, and Phil Hanson (pictured) of AF Corse win the 24 Hours of Le Mans.
In the US state of Minnesota, state representative Melissa Hortman is assassinated and state senator John Hoffman is injured.
Former president of Nicaragua and first elected female president in the Americas Violeta Chamorro dies at the age of 95.
Israel launches multiple airstrikes across cities in Iran, killing various nuclear scientists and military officials, including IRGC commander-in-chief Hossein Salami.

On this day

June 19: Juneteenth in the United States (1865)

Lou Gehrig baseball card

1785 – The proprietors of King's Chapel, Boston, voted to adopt James Freeman's Book of Common Prayer, thus establishing the first Unitarian church in the Americas.
1838 – The Maryland province of the Jesuits contracted to sell 272 slaves to buyers in Louisiana in one of the largest slave sales in American history.
1939 – American baseball player Lou Gehrig (pictured) was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, now commonly known in the United States as "Lou Gehrig's disease".
2009 – War in Afghanistan: British forces began Operation Panther's Claw, in which more than 350 troops made an aerial assault on Taliban positions in southern Afghanistan.

Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire (d. 1844)
Sarah Rosetta Wakeman (d. 1864)
Aage Bohr (b. 1922)
Clayton Kirkpatrick (d. 2004)

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Today's featured picture

Dred Scott (c. 1799 – 1858) was an enslaved African American who, along with his wife, Harriet Robinson Scott, unsuccessfully sued for the freedom of themselves and their two daughters, Eliza and Lizzie, in the 1857 legal case Dred Scott v. Sandford. The Scotts claimed that they should be granted freedom because Dred had lived for four years in Illinois and the Wisconsin Territory, where slavery was illegal, and laws in those jurisdictions said that slave holders gave up their rights to slaves if they stayed for an extended period. The Supreme Court of the United States ruled against Scott in a landmark decision that held the Constitution did not extend American citizenship to people of black African descent, and therefore they could not enjoy the rights and privileges that the Constitution conferred upon American citizens. The Dred Scott decision is widely considered the worst in the Supreme Court's history, being widely denounced for its overt racism, judicial activism, poor legal reasoning, and crucial role in the events that led to the American Civil War four years later. The ruling was later superseded by the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which abolished slavery, in 1865, followed by the Fourteenth Amendment, whose first section guaranteed birthright citizenship for "all persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof", in 1868. This posthumous oil-on-canvas portrait of Scott was painted by Louis Schultze, after an 1857 photograph by John H. Fitzgibbon, and now hangs in the Missouri History Museum in St. Louis.

Painting credit: Louis Schultze, after John H. Fitzgibbon

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