Wikiwand Today

Your daily knowledge snacks, directly from Wikipedia

Latest News

Hunga Tonga eruption

Belgian-British pilot Zara Rutherford becomes the youngest woman to fly solo around the world.
Microsoft announces its forthcoming acquisition, pending regulatory approvals, of video game company Activision Blizzard.
A 5.3 magnitude earthquake in Badghis Province, Afghanistan, kills at least 28 people.
The Hunga Tonga volcano erupts (satellite animation shown), causing damage in Tonga and tsunamis across the Pacific Ocean.

Today in History

January 24: Mother's Day in Iran (2022): Day of the Unification of the Romanian Principalities in Romania

AD 41 – Cassius Chaerea and disgruntled Praetorian Guards murdered the Roman emperor Caligula, replacing him with his uncle Claudius.
1857 – The University of Calcutta (pictured), the first modern university in the Indian subcontinent, was established.
1915 – First World War: British ships of the Grand Fleet intercepted and surprised a German High Seas Fleet squadron in the North Sea, sinking a cruiser and damaging several other vessels.
1966 – Air India Flight 101, en route to London from Bombay, crashed into Mont Blanc in France, killing all 117 people on board.
1989 – American serial killer Ted Bundy was executed by electric chair in Florida for the murders of 30 young women.

George Rooke (d. 1709)
Signe Rink (b. 1836)
Mary Lou Retton (b. 1968)

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Did You Know?

60 Wall Street

... that J.P. Morgan & Co. received a tax exemption for its former 60 Wall Street headquarters after the building's original developer had been denied the same exemption?
... that Oswald Spengler and the artist can be seen in the painting Late Visitors to Pompeii?
... that current Hawaii football defensive coordinator Trent Figg coached for the United States national team in 2016?
... that Dyson Institute Village's modular student-housing pods were inspired by Habitat 67?
... that Bobbie Gentry defined her composition "Ode to Billie Joe" as a "study in unconscious cruelty"?
... that Amanda Asay was the longest-serving member of the Canadian women's baseball team when she died at 33, having played on the team for sixteen years?
... that the more irreverent moments of The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction, such as a golf game with giant balls, were added to break up the story's intensity?
... that immediately after Colonel Drury-Lowe reassured his men that "[the bullets] are all passing over your heads", the officer next to him was shot and killed?

Today's Featured Article

The New York Stock Exchange Building is the headquarters of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). It is composed of two connected structures in Lower Manhattan, New York City. One part, the original structure at 18 Broad Street, was designed in the Classical Revival style by George B. Post; the other is a 23-story office annex at 11 Wall Street, designed by Trowbridge & Livingston in a similar style. The NYSE had occupied the site on Broad Street since 1865 but had to expand its previous building several times, and so the structure at 18 Broad Street was erected between 1901 and 1903. Within two decades, the new building had become overcrowded, and the annex at 11 Wall Street was added between 1920 and 1922. The original structure's colonnade is an icon of the NYSE; behind it is the main trading floor, a 72-foot-tall (22 m) rectangular space. The building was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1978 and a city landmark by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission in 1985. (Full article...)

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Today's Featured Picture

The Winter Palace is a palace in Saint Petersburg that served as the official residence of the Russian emperors from 1732 to 1917. The palace and its precincts now house the Hermitage Museum. The green-and-white palace has the overall shape of an elongated rectangle, with a 215-metre-long (705 ft) and 30-metre-high (98 ft) principal facade. The Winter Palace has been calculated to contain 1,886 doors, 1,945 windows, 1,500 rooms and 117 staircases. This aerial view of the palace was taken in 2016.

Photograph credit: Andrew Shiva