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From today's featured article

Ophelia near North Carolina

Hurricane Ophelia was a long-lived tropical cyclone, the fifteenth named storm and the eighth hurricane of the record-breaking 2005 Atlantic hurricane season. Classified as a tropical depression on September 6, it moved along a looping course, tending north. It reached hurricane status on September 8, though it repeatedly lost and regained it. The system reached hurricane strength for the fourth time on September 14, with maximum sustained winds of 85 mph (140 km/h). Ophelia had completed a second loop and was moving northwest toward North Carolina. It mostly remained offshore though its eyewall scraped the coastline for two days. It degraded to tropical storm strength on September 16 as it began accelerating northeast. Ophelia traversed Atlantic Canada before dissipating on September 23 over the Norwegian Sea. With the storm occurring on the heels of Hurricane Katrina, governments were quick to prepare shelters. Three people died as the result of the storm, with another missing. (Full article...)

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Did you know ...

Round tower at Devenish Island

... that the ecclesiastical site at Devenish Island (pictured) was among the first protected monuments in the United Kingdom?
... that wrestler Vladimir Popov initially viewed winning a bronze medal at the Olympics as a "failure"?
... that the German Empire dispatched six warships to Nicaragua after a marriage dispute led to a shooting and Germany's consul being arrested?
... that a Japanese racehorse was named the tourism ambassador of a city in Hokkaido?
... that President Paul Kagame pardoned more than five hundred people who had been arrested for abortion in Rwanda?
... that Frank W. Lehan invented a search-and-rescue system used in the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster, but never profited from it?
... that the devkit used to develop Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy had to be smuggled into the United States due to export restrictions?
... that Achmad Maschut, the mayor of Kediri, gave municipal government jobs to players from the city's football club after they became national champions in 2003?
... that the Little Valley Fire prompted the evacuation of 101 horses and one parrot?

In the news

Giorgio Armani

Italian fashion designer Giorgio Armani (pictured) dies at the age of 91.
A derailment on the Ascensor da Glória funicular railway in Lisbon, Portugal, kills 16 people.
In Sudan, a landslide destroys the village of Tarasin, killing at least 375 people.
A magnitude-6.0 earthquake in Afghanistan leaves more than 2,200 people dead.

On this day

September 6: Defence Day in Pakistan (1965), Ghost Festival in China (2025)

Cal Ripken Jr.

1863 – General John S. Marmaduke fatally wounded his Confederate Army colleague Lucius M. Walker in a formal duel in Arkansas.
1930 – Argentine president Hipólito Yrigoyen was deposed in a military coup by José Félix Uriburu.
1952 – A prototype aircraft crashed at the Farnborough Airshow in Hampshire, England, killing the pilot and test observer on board, and 29 spectators.
1995 – Cal Ripken Jr. (pictured) played his 2,131st consecutive Major League Baseball game, breaking the 56-year-old record set by Lou Gehrig.
1999 – The Parliament of Singapore relocated from the Old Parliament House to its current meeting place.

Jessie Willcox Smith (b. 1863)
Roger Waters (b. 1943)
Homare Sawa (b. 1978)
Robert Mugabe (d. 2019)

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Today's featured picture

The galah (Eolophus roseicapilla) is a species of bird in the cockatoo family, Cacatuidae. It is endemic to mainland Australia and is also an introduced species in Tasmania and New Zealand. The galah is adapted to a wide variety of modified and unmodified habitats and is one of Australia's most abundant and widespread bird species, being absent only from the driest areas and the far north of Cape York Peninsula. The galah is often found in flocks of 10 to 1,000 individuals, which can be mixed flocks also including the pink cockatoo, the little corella, and the sulphur-crested cockatoo. It is known to hybridize with all of these species. The galah nests in tree cavities and lays white eggs, usually two to five in a clutch. The eggs are incubated for about 25 days, and the chicks leave the nest about 49 days after hatching. Galahs in captivity have been known to live for up to 72 years. This male galah of the subspecies E. r. albiceps was photographed in the Adelaide Botanic Garden in Adelaide, South Australia.

Photograph credit: Charles J. Sharp

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