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From today's featured article

Pound in 1918

Ezra Pound (30 October 1885 – 1 November 1972) was an American poet and critic, a major figure in the early modernist poetry movement, and a World War II collaborator in Fascist Italy. His works include Ripostes (1912), Hugh Selwyn Mauberley (1920), and the epic poem The Cantos (c. 1917–1962). Pound helped shape the work of contemporaries such as H.D., Robert Frost, T. S. Eliot, Ernest Hemingway, and James Joyce. He moved to Italy in 1924, where he embraced Benito Mussolini's Italian fascism and supported Adolf Hitler. During World War II, Pound recorded hundreds of radio propaganda broadcasts attacking the United States, praising the Holocaust in Italy, and urging American soldiers to surrender. In 1945 Pound was captured and ruled mentally unfit to stand trial. While confined for over 12 years at a psychiatric hospital, his The Pisan Cantos (1948) was awarded the Bollingen Prize for Poetry causing great controversy. Released in 1958, he returned, unrepentant, to Italy, where he died in 1972. (Full article...)

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Did you know ...

Bust of a Chinese Gentleman

... that a bust of a Chinese gentleman (pictured) is not based on any actual subject?
... that a 15-second commercial for a streaming service has been blamed for causing arguments and domestic violence?
... that Darko Pešić ran the 100-metre race at the 2024 Summer Olympics with a broken foot?
... that the chimney in a work by Herman Melville has been described as a "a bastion of phallic, assertive, and aggressive masculinity"?
... that Robert Brodribb Hammond established the Sydney suburb of Hammondville to house families made homeless by the Great Depression?
... that fake Buddhist monks scam tourists out of money to build non-existent temples?
... that Lou Romanoli ran a semi-pro baseball team whose attendances sometimes exceeded that of a nearby MLB team?
... that an Antiguan man who escaped from custody in Canada is suspected of stealing a yacht and sailing it directly into Hurricane Larry?
... that junior archaeologists used to ask John Papadimitriou to walk over their sites for good luck?

In the news

Nicușor Dan

Author Banu Mushtaq and translator Deepa Bhasthi win the International Booker Prize for Heart Lamp: Selected Stories.
Nicușor Dan (pictured) is elected as president of Romania.
In the Portuguese legislative election, the Democratic Alliance wins the most seats in parliament.
Austria, represented by JJ with the song "Wasted Love", wins the Eurovision Song Contest.
In the Philippines, the Alyansa para sa Bagong Pilipinas wins the most seats in the Senate election, while Lakas–CMD, one of its component parties, wins the most seats in the House elections.

On this day

May 23: Aromanian National Day

Louis of Nassau

1568 – The Dutch Revolt broke out when rebels led by Louis of Nassau (pictured) invaded Friesland at the Battle of Heiligerlee.
1873 – The North-West Mounted Police, the forerunner of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, was established to bring law and order to and assert Canadian sovereignty over the Northwest Territories.
1934 – During a strike against the Electric Auto-Lite company in Toledo, a fight began between nearly 10,000 American strikers and sheriff's deputies, later involving the Ohio National Guard.
1999 – Professional wrestler Owen Hart died immediately before a World Wrestling Federation match after dropping 70 feet (21 m) onto the ring during a botched entrance.

Ignaz Moscheles (b. 1794)
Franz Xaver von Baader (d. 1841)
David Lewis (d. 1981)
Luis Posada Carriles (d. 2018)

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From today's featured list

Entrance sign to Mojave National Preserve

There are 21 protected areas of the United States designated as national preserves. They were established by an act of Congress to protect areas that have resources often associated with national parks but where certain natural resource-extractive activities such as hunting and mining may be permitted, provided their natural values are preserved. Eleven national preserves are co-managed with national parks or national monuments; because hunting is forbidden in those units, preserves provide a similar level of protection from development but allow hunting and in some cases grazing. National preserves are located in eleven states; Alaska is home to ten of them, including the largest, Noatak National Preserve. Their total area is 24,651,566 acres (99,761 km²), 86% of which is in Alaska. All national preserves except Tallgrass Prairie permit hunting in accordance with local regulations. (Full list...)

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Today's featured picture

The Cocoanuts is a 1929 pre-Code musical comedy film starring the Marx Brothers (Groucho, Harpo, Chico, and Zeppo). Produced for Paramount Pictures by Walter Wanger, who is not credited, the film also stars Mary Eaton, Oscar Shaw, Margaret Dumont and Kay Francis. The first sound film to credit more than one director (Robert Florey and Joseph Santley), it was adapted to the screen by Morrie Ryskind from the musical play by George S. Kaufman. Five of the film's tunes were composed by Irving Berlin, including "When My Dreams Come True", sung by Oscar Shaw and Mary Eaton. Principal photography began on February 4, 1929, at Paramount’s Astoria studio, and it premiered on May 23, 1929, at the Rialto Theatre in New York.

Film credit: Robert Florey and Joseph Santley

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