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From today's featured article

Cher (born May 20, 1946) is an American singer and actress. Dubbed the "Goddess of Pop", she gained fame in 1965 as part of the folk duo Sonny & Cher, early exponents of 1960s counterculture. She became a TV star in the 1970s, with The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour drawing more than 30 million viewers weekly, and topped the Billboard Hot 100 with narrative pop songs including "Gypsys, Tramps & Thieves" and "Half-Breed". Transitioning to film, she earned two Academy Awards nominations—for Silkwood (1983) and Moonstruck (1987), winning Best Actress for the latter—and received the Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actress for Mask (1985). Her dance-pop comeback album Believe (1998) introduced the "Cher effect", a stylized use of Auto-Tune to distort vocals. Her 2002–2005 Farewell Tour grossed $250 million, the highest ever by a female artist at the time. A Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee, Cher is the only solo artist with Billboard number-one singles in each of seven decades. (Full article...)

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Did you know ...

HNLMS Java

... that the crew of HNLMS Java (pictured) struggled to access the sinking ship's life vests because these were locked away in a hard-to-reach compartment?
... that Gabriel Luna used a flamethrower in an episode of The Last of Us, and afterwards had recurring visions of flaming figures running towards him?
... that many North Carolina Farmers' Union members left the organization as a result of leader Henry Quincy Alexander's opposition to American entry into World War I?
... that 33 years after The New York Times called David Lynch's film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me "brain-dead" and seemingly "the worst movie ever made", it conceded that the film was now "revered"?
... that two future deans of the University of Indonesia, Margono Soekarjo and Djamaloeddin, conducted the first surgery on conjoined twins in Indonesia?
... that the nearly 200 sexual encounters Molly Kochan had while terminally ill formed the basis of the Dying for Sex podcast and subsequent TV series?
... that a gun club once allegedly parked boats in the living room of a plantation house designed by Frank Lloyd Wright?
... that Jane Remover's school counselor made sure Remover felt fine after a classmate wrote an essay about lyrics from Teen Week?
... that playwright Jason Grote was involved in releasing 10,000 crickets in New York City?

In the news

JJ

Austria, represented by JJ (pictured) with the song "Wasted Love", wins the Eurovision Song Contest.
Former president of Uruguay José Mujica dies at the age of 89.
The Kurdistan Workers' Party announces its dissolution, ending its insurgency against Turkey.
Robert Francis Prevost is elected as Pope Leo XIV, becoming the first Catholic pope born in the United States.

On this day

May 20: National Day of Remembrance in Cambodia (1975); National Awakening Day in Indonesia (1908)

325 – The First Council of Nicaea (depicted), the first ecumenical council of the Christian Church, was formally opened by Constantine the Great.
794 – According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, King Æthelberht II of East Anglia was beheaded on the orders of Offa of Mercia.
1714 – J. S. Bach led the first performance of his Pentecost cantata Erschallet, ihr Lieder at the chapel of Schloss Weimar.
1927 – With the signing of the Treaty of Jeddah, the United Kingdom recognized the sovereignty of Ibn Saud over Hejaz and Nejd, which later merged to become Saudi Arabia.
1941 – World War II: German paratroopers began the Battle of Heraklion on the island of Crete, capturing the airfield and port in Heraklion ten days later.

William Fargo (b. 1818)
Gertrude Guillaume-Schack (d. 1903)
Nizamuddin Asir Adrawi (d. 2021)

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Today's featured picture

Rhina Aguirre (20 May 1939 – 30 October 2021) was a Bolivian disability activist, politician, and sociologist. An opponent of the military dictatorships of the 1970s and 1980s, Aguirre was an early activist in the country's human rights movement. Exiled to Ecuador by the regime of Luis García Meza, she collaborated with Leonidas Proaño's indigenous ministry and worked closely with the country's peasant and social organizations. Blinded in both eyes by toxoplasmosis, Aguirre took up the cause of disability rights, joining the Departmental Council for Disabled Persons upon her return to Bolivia. In 2009, she joined the Movement for Socialism and was elected to represent the department of Tarija in the Chamber of Senators, becoming the first blind person in Bolivian history to assume a parliamentary seat. This photograph of Aguirre was taken in 2014.

Photograph credit: Chamber of Senators; edited by Krisgabwoosh

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