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From today's featured article

Robert Poore (20 March 1866 – 14 July 1938) was an Anglo-Irish cricketer and British Army officer. He featured most prominently in first-class cricket playing county cricket for Hampshire, where he gained a reputation as a batsman. Poore also played first-class cricket in India for the Europeans in the Bombay Presidency Matches. He began his military service in the Volunteer Force with the 3rd (Royal Wiltshire Militia) Battalion of the Wiltshire Regiment. From there, he transferred to the 7th Hussars. Poore served in the Second Matabele War in Southern Africa and later in the Second Boer War from 1899 to 1902, during which he was seconded to the Mounted Military Police and served as provost marshal at Army Headquarters Pretoria. Decorated with the Distinguished Service Order during the war, Poore served in the First World War between 1914 and 1918, commanding the Jhansi Brigade of the British Indian Army, for which he was appointed Companion of the Order of the Indian Empire. (Full article...)

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Did you know ...

Makeship plush of Wikipedia's 25th-anniversary mascot

... that Makeship produced a plush toy of Wikipedia's 25th-anniversary mascot (pictured)?
... that Sudjarwo Tjondronegoro advanced Indonesia's claim to Western New Guinea in the United Nations, and later accepted control over the territory?
... that Henry Williamson stopped writing The Patriot's Progress for a year because he was so disgusted by the praise for All Quiet on the Western Front?
... that Kwek Leng Beng was gifted a gold-dipped AK-47 by Al Waleed bin Talal Al Saud after they jointly purchased the Plaza Hotel from Donald Trump?
... that formal semantics uses logic and mathematics to study language?
... that Lee Blessing called his baseball play Cobb a "one-man play for four men"?
... that James Stanley Rogers was the secretary of a panel that oversaw the production of optical munitions in Australia during the Second World War?
... that Vietnam's K50 Waterfall is named after its height?
... that the seven Mohongo-class gunboats were uncharacteristically comfortable?

In the news

Maikel García

The World Baseball Classic concludes with Venezuela defeating the United States in the final (tournament MVP Maikel García pictured).
In association football, the Confederation of African Football overturns the 2025 Africa Cup of Nations final originally won by Senegal, declaring Morocco the winner of the tournament.
More than 100 people are killed by a Pakistani airstrike in Kabul, Afghanistan.
Denis Sassou Nguesso is proclaimed the winner of the Republic of the Congo presidential election.

On this day

March 20: Eid al-Fitr (Islam, 2026); Longtaitou Festival in China (2026); Nowruz (2026)

Eyjafjallajökull

1602 – The Dutch East India Company, the first company to issue stock, was established.
1854 – The Republican Party was founded in Ripon, Wisconsin, by politicians opposing the Kansas–Nebraska Act and the expansion of slavery in the United States.
1890 – Emperor Wilhelm II dismissed Otto von Bismarck as the chancellor of the German Empire.
1926 – Chiang Kai-shek initiated a purge of communist elements within the National Revolutionary Army in Guangzhou, China.
2010 – Eyjafjallajökull (pictured) in Iceland began a series of volcanic events, later disrupting air travel across Europe.

Adrienne Lecouvreur (d. 1730)
Maria Lacerda de Moura (d. 1945)
Chester Bennington (b. 1976)
Trevor Zegras (b. 2001)

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From today's featured list

Dan Quayle

Dan Quayle, the 44th vice president of the United States, has run for public office several times, beginning in 1976. A member of the Republican Party, Quayle began his political career in 1976 by unseating J. Edward Roush, the Democratic representative for Indiana's 4th congressional district. After serving two terms in the House of Representatives, Quayle upset the three-term incumbent Democratic senator Birch Bayh as part of a Republican landslide in the 1980 United States Senate elections. In 1988, Quayle was chosen by George H. W. Bush, then vice president, to serve as his running mate in the 1988 presidential election. They won the election, defeating the Democratic candidates (Massachusetts governor Michael Dukakis and Texas senator Lloyd Bentsen) and taking office on January 20, 1989. Quayle and Bush ran for reelection but were defeated in the 1992 presidential election by Arkansas governor Bill Clinton and Tennessee senator Al Gore. (Full list...)

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Today's featured picture

The Chesme Church is a small Russian Orthodox church in Saint Petersburg, Russia. Built by the Russian court architect Yury Felten in 1780, at the direction of Catherine the Great, Empress of Russia, it was erected to commemorate the anniversary of Russia's 1770 victory over Turkish forces at the Battle of Chesma, during the Russo-Turkish War of 1768 to 1774. The church and the adjoining Chesme Palace were the earliest Neo-Gothic constructions in the St Petersburg area. Considered by some to be Saint Petersburg's single most impressive church, it is a rare example of very early Gothic Revival influence in Russian church architecture. This photograph shows the facade of the Chesme Church in 2012.

Photograph credit: Alexander Savin

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