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From today's featured article

First page of The Detective's Album

Mary Fortune (1832–1911) was an Australian writer who was one of the earliest female authors of detective fiction. Born in Ireland, she lived in Canada before moving to the Australian goldfields in 1855. She began writing for local newspapers soon after her arrival, and was a prolific pseudonymous contributor to The Australian Journal for more than four decades. Her writing primarily consisted of short crime stories – including her best-known work, the 500-story series The Detective's Album (pictured) – but also included serial novels, journalism, poetry, and a memoir. She also wrote romances, Gothic fiction, and ghost stories. Her writing drew on her experiences in the goldfields and in Melbourne's rapidly urbanising environment; she often criticised colonial society and its treatment of women. Despite her popularity as a writer, Fortune experienced unstable housing and alcoholism, and died in poverty. Her identity, obscured by pseudonyms, was not rediscovered until the 1950s. (Full article...)

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On this day

February 26

Nabonassar's name in Akkadian

747 BC – According to Ptolemy, the reign of the Babylonian king Nabonassar (name in Akkadian pictured) began, marking a new era characterized by the systematic maintenance of chronologically precise historical records.
1914 – RMS Britannic, the third and largest Olympic-class ocean liner of the White Star Line after RMS Olympic and RMS Titanic, was launched at the Harland & Wolff shipyard in Belfast.
1979 – The Superliner railcar entered revenue service with Amtrak.
1995 – Barings Bank, the oldest merchant bank in London, was declared insolvent after its head derivatives trader in Singapore, Nick Leeson, lost £827 million while making unauthorised trades on futures contracts.
2014 – Former editor-in-chief of Hong Kong newspaper Ming Pao Kevin Lau was stabbed, prompting concerns and protests about media freedom.

Fatima bint al-Ahmar (d. 1349)
Archibald Campbell, 9th Earl of Argyll (b. 1629)
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (b. 1954)
Jennie Smillie Robertson (d. 1981)

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Today's featured picture

Westminster Cathedral, officially the Metropolitan Cathedral of the Most Precious Blood, is a Catholic church at Westminster, London, England. It is the seat of the Archbishop of Westminster. Designed by John Francis Bentley in a Christian neo-Byzantine style influenced by ninth-century architecture, it is constructed almost entirely of brick, without steel reinforcements. The site on which the cathedral stands was purchased by the Archdiocese of Westminster in 1885 with construction taking place from 1895 to 1903. The cathedral has been visited by Pope John Paul II in 1982, by Queen Elizabeth II in 1995 – the first reigning monarch to attend a Catholic service since the Reformation – and by Pope Benedict XVI in 2010. This picture shows Westminster Cathedral's chapel of the Blessed Sacrament.

Photograph credit: Diego Delso

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