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From today's featured article

Joe Johnson, winner of the championship

The 1986 World Snooker Championship was a professional snooker tournament that took place between 19 April and 5 May 1986 at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield, England. It was the sixth and final ranking event of the 1985–86 snooker season and the 1986 edition of the World Snooker Championship, which was first held in 1927. The total prize fund was £350,000, with £70,000 awarded to the winner. The defending champion was Dennis Taylor, who had defeated Steve Davis 18–17 in the 1985 World Snooker Championship final to win his first world title. Taylor lost in the first round of the 1986 event 6–10 to Mike Hallett. Joe Johnson (pictured), the world number 16, defeated Davis 18–12 in the final to win his sole ranking event. Prior to the competition, the bookmakers' odds for a Johnson victory were 150/1. There were a total of 20 century breaks compiled during the tournament, the highest of which was a 134 made by Davis. (Full article...)

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Did you know ...

Timon

... that conflicting traditions consider Timon (pictured) to have served as bishop of either Bostra or Corinth, to have died by either fire or crucifixion, and to have died in either Corinth or Philippi?
... that the manager of OAP Bratislava was kept a secret from the public because he was Jewish?
... that Hannah Spencer qualified as a plasterer in the same month that she became the first Green Party MP to win a UK by-election?
... that Pennsylvania's 1776 constitution created the Council of Censors, one of the earliest American institutions expressly charged with enforcing a written constitution against ordinary laws?
... that John Walsh invented the high-speed dental drill after conducting hearing tests on returned servicemen?
... that The 20/20 Experience World Tour made Justin Timberlake the highest-grossing solo touring artist of 2014?
... that the 2018 film Crazy Rich Asians is often considered the best airplane film?
... that, at the Galleria in New York City, glass-enclosed balconies could not be used as bedrooms because they would then count toward the building's floor area?
... that the newest member of Washington's congressional delegation usually receives a "gimlet-eyed monstrosity"?

In the news

Romuald Wadagni

Two separate school shootings in Siverek and in Onikişubat, Turkey, leave 12 people dead and 35 others injured.
Romuald Wadagni (pictured) wins the Beninese presidential election.
In golf, Rory McIlroy wins the Masters Tournament.
The Tisza Party, led by Péter Magyar, wins the Hungarian parliamentary election, ending sixteen years of rule by Viktor Orbán's Fidesz.

On this day

April 19: Feast day of Saint Alphege of Canterbury (Catholicism, Anglicanism); Primrose Day in London

The Doors

1506 – In Lisbon, Portugal, a crowd began a massacre of Jews who had been forced to convert to Christianity.
1861 – The first bloodshed of the American Civil War took place when Confederate sympathizers in Baltimore, Maryland, attacked members of the Massachusetts militia en route to Washington, D.C.
1971 – The Doors (pictured) released L.A. Woman, their final album during their lead vocalist Jim Morrison's lifetime.
1984 – "Advance Australia Fair", written by Scottish-born composer Peter Dodds McCormick, officially replaced "God Save the Queen" as Australia's national anthem.
2000 – Air Philippines Flight 541 crashed in Samal, Davao del Norte, killing all 131 people on board.
2020 – A series of attacks in Nova Scotia, Canada, ended when the perpetrator was killed by police, leaving 22 victims dead.

Mary Louise Booth (b. 1831)
Elizabeth Raffald (d. 1781)
Kwon Ki-ok (d. 1988)
The Rizzler (b. 2016)

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Today's featured picture

The fawn-breasted brilliant (Heliodoxa rubinoides) is a bird in the hummingbird family, Trochilidae. It is native to the Andes of South America, occurring in Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru. The species inhabits tropical and subtropical forests, at altitudes between 1,000 to 2,300 metres (3,300 to 7,500 ft), and feeds mainly on nectar, as well as occasional small insects and spiders. The fawn-breasted brilliant has a patchy distribution, but is nonetheless classified as a least-concern species by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. It is green above with iridescent copper underparts, and a long, slightly curved bill. Males perform courtship displays but do not assist with nesting. The female builds a camouflaged nest, lays two eggs, and raises the chicks alone. This fawn-breasted brilliant of the subspecies H. r. aequatorialis was photographed in flight in the Refugio Paz de las Aves, a nature reserve in the foothills of the Ecuadorian Andes.

Photograph credit: Charles J. Sharp

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