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From today's featured article

Dracunculiasis, also called Guinea-worm disease, is a parasitic infection by the Guinea worm, Dracunculus medinensis. A person becomes infected by drinking water contaminated with Guinea-worm larvae, which penetrate the digestive tract and escape into the body. Around a year later, the adult female migrates to an exit site – usually the lower leg – and induces an intensely painful blister on the skin. Eventually, the blister bursts, creating a painful wound from which the worm gradually emerges. The wound remains painful throughout the worm's emergence, disabling the affected person for the three to ten weeks it takes the worm to emerge. There is no medication to treat or prevent dracunculiasis. Instead, the mainstay of treatment is the careful wrapping of the emerging worm around a small stick or gauze to encourage and speed up its exit. A disease of extreme poverty, there were 14 cases reported worldwide in 2023, as efforts continue to eradicate it. (Full article...)

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Did you know ...

A Bergebyløpet N70 musher

... that the route of the Bergebyløpet N70 long-distance sled dog race (pictured) is entirely north of the 70th parallel north?
... that Voltaire Molesworth spent part of his early childhood in a utopian socialist colony in Paraguay?
... that the Meitetsu Okoshi Line was closed because there were too many users?
... that Prime Minister of Singapore Lee Hsien Loong's phrase "mee siam mai hum" was described as "Singlish for being out of touch"?
... that American football player Terry Bussey accounted for 72 touchdowns in a season despite playing with a torn meniscus?
... that "The Well" is a sequel to a 17-year-old Doctor Who episode?
... that the second owner of Kentuck Knob, a house by Frank Lloyd Wright, "fell in love with the outside" and wanted to see the inside so urgently that he decided to purchase it?
... that Makoto Nishimoto tried to run in the 2020 Tokyo gubernatorial election as his nickname "Super Crazy-kun"?
... that a stray dog named Argo visited the ruins of Pompeii daily for 15 years and was considered its "guardian"?

In the news

Nicușor Dan

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 22: National Maritime Day in the United States; Unity Day in Yemen

Prayut Chan-o-cha

1766 – A magnitude-7.1 earthquake struck Constantinople and was followed by a tsunami that caused significant damage.
1874 – Giuseppe Verdi's Requiem was first performed in the San Marco church in Milan to commemorate the first anniversary of Alessandro Manzoni's death.
1998 – In Public Prosecutor v Taw Cheng Kong, the Court of Appeal of Singapore overruled a High Court decision in the only time a statute in Singapore had been ruled unconstitutional.
2014 – Prayut Chan-o-cha (pictured), the commander-in-chief of the Royal Thai Army, launched a coup d'état against the caretaker government following six months of political crisis.

Jovan Vladimir (d. 1016)
John Forest (d. 1538)
Charles Aznavour (b. 1924)
Apolo Ohno (b. 1982)

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Today's featured picture

In the Loge, also known as At the Opera, is an 1878 impressionist painting by the American artist Mary Cassatt. The oil-on-canvas painting displays a bourgeois woman in a loge at the opera house looking through her opera glasses, while a man in the background looks at her. The woman's costume and fan make clear her upper class status. Art historians see the painting as commentary on the role of gender, looking, and power in the social spaces of the nineteenth century. The painting is currently in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, which also holds a preliminary drawing for the work.

Painting credit: Mary Cassatt

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