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From today's featured article

Poster advertising the Mud March

The Mud March, or United Procession of Women, was a peaceful demonstration in London on 9 February 1907 organised by the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies (NUWSS), in which more than three thousand women marched from Hyde Park Corner to the Strand in support of women's suffrage. Women from all classes participated in the largest public demonstration supporting women's suffrage seen to that date. It acquired the name "Mud March" from the day's weather; incessant heavy rain left the marchers drenched and mud-spattered. The NUWSS and other groups organised the march to coincide with the opening of Parliament. The event attracted much public interest and broadly sympathetic press coverage, but when a women's suffrage bill was presented the following month it was "talked out" without a vote. The march had a large impact on public awareness and on the movement's tactics. Large peaceful public demonstrations, never previously attempted, became standard features of the suffrage campaign. (Full article...)

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Did you know ...

Bombay sandwich

... that the Bombay sandwich (example pictured) typically uses potatoes and chutney, but some versions use chocolate?
... that all five chaplains awarded the Medal of Honor since the American Civil War were Catholic priests?
... that the attorney of the last person executed by Peru requested Pope John Paul II's intervention to save his client's life?
... that mangroves reduced the impact of Cyclone Dana?
... that Variety once called Trisha Ziff a "photographer's photographer"?
... that the headquarters of Indonesia's 16th Mechanized Infantry Brigade was a Japanese military base, seized by Indonesian youths after Japan's surrender in 1945?
... that shark fin is one of the "four sea delicacies", a quartet of luxury seafoods in Chinese cuisine?
... that Immanuel Iheanacho was measured as a 14-year-old freshman at 6 ft 6 in (1.98 m) and 325 lb (147 kg), with a 7 ft (2.1 m) wingspan?
... that in 1956 a person dressed as the anthropomorphic hedgehog and comic star Mecki traveled by helicopter to more than 100 cities in southern Germany to give children gifts?

In the news

Winter Olympics opening ceremony

The Winter Olympics open (ceremony pictured) in Milan and Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy.
New START, the last active nuclear arms reduction treaty between the United States and Russia, expires.
Libyan presidential candidate Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, son of Muammar Gaddafi, is assassinated.
Attacks on two villages by Islamist gunmen in Kwara State, Nigeria, kill at least 162 people.

On this day

February 9: Feast day of Saint Apollonia (in Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy)

Australian Defence Force Ensign

1861 – Jefferson Davis was named the provisional president of the Confederate States of America.
1971 – An earthquake registering 6.6 M_w struck the northern San Fernando Valley near the Los Angeles district of Sylmar, killing 65 people.
1976 – The Australian Defence Force (ensign pictured) was formed by the integration of the Australian Army, the Royal Australian Navy, and the Royal Australian Air Force.
1996 – Breaking a seventeen-month ceasefire, the Provisional Irish Republican Army detonated a powerful truck bomb in the London Docklands, killing two people and injuring more than a hundred others.
2001 – The American submarine USS Greeneville collided with the Ehime Maru, a Japanese training vessel operated by a high school, sinking the latter ship and killing nine people on board.

Agnès Sorel (d. 1450)
Alberto Vargas (b. 1896)
Philipp Harnoncourt (b. 1931)
Tom Hiddleston (b. 1981)

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From today's featured list

Tom Hiddleston

The American television series Loki won 11 awards from 96 nominations. Created by Michael Waldron for the streaming service Disney+ and based on Marvel Comics, it features the character Loki. Tom Hiddleston (pictured) received the most acting nominations for the series. It was nominated for four Critics' Choice Television Awards and nine Primetime Creative Arts Emmy Awards. From major guilds, the series was nominated for two Art Directors Guild Awards, three Costume Designers Guild Awards, a Screen Actors Guild Award, and two Writers Guild of America Awards. (Full list...)

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Today's featured picture

Laura Clay (February 9, 1849 – June 29, 1941) was a leader of the American women's suffrage movement and the co-founder and first president of the Kentucky Equal Rights Association. She was one of the most important suffragists in the South, favoring the states' rights approach to suffrage. A powerful orator, she was active in the Democratic Party and had important leadership roles in local, state and national politics. In 1920 at the Democratic National Convention, she was one of two women to be the first women to have their names placed into nomination for the presidency at the convention of a major political party. This photograph by the Gerhard Sisters shows Clay in 1916.

Photograph credit: Gerhard Sisters; restored by Kentuckian

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