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The Tomb of Antipope John XXIII was created by Donatello and Michelozzo for the Florence Baptistery adjacent to the Duomo. It was commissioned after Antipope John XXIII's death on December 22, 1419, and completed during the 1420s, establishing it as one of the early landmarks of Renaissance Florence. John XXIII had a long history of cooperation with Florence, which had viewed him as the legitimate pontiff during the Western Schism. Its design included figures of the three Virtues in niches, John XXIII's family arms, a gilded bronze recumbent effigy laid out above an inscription-bearing sarcophagus, and a Madonna and Child in a half-lunette, with a canopy. At its completion, the monument was the tallest sculpture in Florence. The tomb monument was the first of several collaborations between Donatello and Michelozzo; attribution of each design element to the artists, as well as interpretations of its design and iconography, have been debated by art historians. (Full article...)

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René Vallon

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... that Charles Herman Allen, university administrator and American Civil War captain, opened the University of Wisconsin to female enrollment in 1863?
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... that the Mingxing Film Company released more than 150 films in 16 years, but most are now lost?
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In the news

Aftermath of the Magdeburg car attack

A car attack (aftermath pictured) at a Christmas market in Magdeburg, Germany, kills five people and injures more than two hundred others.
In France, Dominique Pelicot and 49 other men are convicted of the serial rape of his then-wife Gisèle Pelicot.
A 7.3-magnitude earthquake hits Vanuatu's capital, Port Vila, leaving at least sixteen people dead.
Cyclone Chido leaves more than 140 people dead in southeast Africa.

On this day

December 22

Aerial view of the Kingston Fossil Plant coal fly ash slurry spill

856 – An earthquake with an estimated magnitude of 7.9 struck the eastern Alborz mountains in Persia, causing an estimated 200,000 deaths.
1948 – Chaired by Sjafruddin Prawiranegara, the Emergency Government of the Republic of Indonesia was established to counter Dutch attempts to re-assert colonial control.
1988 – Brazilian unionist and environmental activist Chico Mendes was murdered at his home in Xapuri.
2008 – A dike ruptured at a waste containment area for a coal-fired power plant in Kingston, Tennessee, releasing 1.1 billion gallons (4.2 million m³) of coal fly ash slurry (aftermath pictured) in the largest industrial spill in US history.

Carl Friedrich Abel (b. 1723)
William Hyde Wollaston (d. 1828)
Meghan Trainor (b. 1993)
Dina Belenkaya (b. 1993)

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Today's featured picture

The common starling (Sturnus vulgaris) is a medium-sized perching bird in the starling family, Sturnidae. It is about 20 centimetres (8 inches) long and has glossy black plumage, which is speckled with white at some times of year. The legs are pink and the bill is black in winter and yellow in summer; young birds have browner plumage than the adults. It is a noisy bird, especially in communal roosts, with an unmusical but varied song. The starling has about a dozen subspecies breeding in open habitats across its native range in temperate Europe and western Asia, and it has been introduced elsewhere. This bird is resident in southern and western Europe and southwestern Asia, while northeastern populations migrate south and west in winter. The starling builds an untidy nest in a natural or artificial cavity in which four or five glossy, pale blue eggs are laid. These take two weeks to hatch and the young remain in the nest for another three weeks. The species is omnivorous, taking a wide range of invertebrates, as well as seeds and fruit. The starling's gift for mimicry has been noted in literature including the medieval Welsh Mabinogion and the works of Pliny the Elder and William Shakespeare. This common starling was photographed at Bodega Head on the northern coast of the U.S. state of California.

Photograph credit: Frank Schulenburg

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