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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 incarcerated for over 12 years at a psychiatric hospital his The Pisan Cantos (1948) was awarded the Bollingen Prize for Poetry causing enormous controversy. Released, in 1958 he returned, unrepentant, to Italy, where he died. (Full article...)

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Did you know ...

Rhino Boy Chris

... that Rhino Boy Chris (pictured) has run 113 marathons wearing a rhinoceros costume to raise awareness for rhino conservation?
... that Miss Behave's Mavericks, a Las Vegas variety show, urges audience members to toss balled up one-dollar bills at performers?
... that a 1586 letter from a grieving pregnant widow to her deceased husband became a sensation in South Korea after it was rediscovered in 1998?
... that after Mark Mulvoy hosted a party, he was reportedly grabbed by the throat for "trying to ruin" the Boston Red Sox?
... that the Battle of Shangi ended when the Congo Free State commander personally shot the leader of the opposing Rwandan army?
... that dramatist Walter Ben Hare became wealthy by writing plays that were rarely performed professionally?
... that a Land Rover driver falling asleep led to the Selby rail crash?
... that the parasitic copepod Driocephalus cerebrinoxius burrows into the brains of sharks through their noses?
... that Robert Allen Norris wrote his PhD dissertation on the brown-headed nuthatch (Sitta pusilla) and the pygmy nuthatch (Sitta pygmaea), later calling it "A Tale of Two Sittas"?

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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