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From today's featured article

Rosa Parks (February 4, 1913 – October 24, 2005) was an American civil rights movement activist best known for her refusal to move from her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, in defiance of Jim Crow racial-segregation laws. When Parks was arrested in 1955, local leaders were searching for a person who would be a good legal test case against segregation. She was deemed a suitable candidate, and the Women's Political Council (WPC) organized a one-day bus boycott on the day of her trial. After Parks was found guilty of violating state law, the boycott was extended indefinitely, lasting for 381 days and finally concluding after segregation on buses was deemed unconstitutional in the court case Browder v. Gayle. Parks received many awards and honors, both throughout her life and posthumously. She received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, a Congressional Gold Medal, and was also the first Black American to be memorialized in the National Statuary Hall. (Full article...)

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Did you know ...

Nemiah Wilson

... that Nemiah Wilson (pictured) ran a tailoring business while playing in the NFL?
... that Yun Jin's appearance in Genshin Impact draws inspiration from legendary Chinese figures like Hua Mulan?
... that Donald Rumsfeld helped develop a mobile game?
... that Gennady Trifonov was one of the few Soviet dissidents who argued for gay rights?
... that Christian missionaries in China translated and published an inflammatory anti-Christian treatise?
... that a judge acquitted Ben Obumselu of manslaughter due to his "promise as a scholar"?
... that the MPLA launched the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Angola in 1963 hoping to secure support from the Organisation of African Unity, but the move had the opposite effect?
... that Alberto Giacometti chose the dying photographer Eli Lotar as the subject of his last sculptures, but himself died before finishing them?
... that Cyril Karabus was convicted of manslaughter and forgery in 2004, a verdict he learned of only eight years later?

In the news

Laura Fernández Delgado

Laura Fernández Delgado (pictured) is elected as the president of Costa Rica.
Clashes between the Balochistan Liberation Army and the armed forces in several districts of Balochistan, Pakistan, leave at least 225 people dead.
A winter storm causes widespread damage across North America and leaves more than 140 people dead.
Vietnam's communist party congress re-elects Tô Lâm as general secretary, the most powerful position in the one-party state.

On this day

February 4: Lichun begins in East Asia (2026); World Cancer Day; National Girls and Women in Sports Day in the United States; Rosa Parks Day in some parts of the United States

London low emission zone sign

1801 – John Marshall, whose court opinions helped lay the basis for U.S. constitutional law and made the Supreme Court a coequal branch of government, took office as chief justice.
1974 – The Troubles: The Provisional Irish Republican Army bombed a motor coach carrying off-duty British Armed Forces personnel and their family members, killing twelve people.
1998 – An earthquake registering 5.9 M_W struck northern Afghanistan, triggering landslides that killed over 2,300 people and destroyed around 15,000 homes.
2008 – The London low emission zone (sign pictured), charging certain diesel-powered commercial vehicles to enter Greater London, came into operation.

Rabanus Maurus (d. 856)
Anders Bure (d. 1646)
Karen Carpenter (d. 1983)
Hy Cohen (d. 2021)

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From today's featured list

Mohammed Abdullahi Abubakar

There have been 16 governors of Bauchi State, in northeastern Nigeria, since it was created on 3 February 1976 from part of the North-Eastern State. Bauchi has had alternating periods of military and civilian rule, with Colonel Mohammed Bello Kaliel as its first military governor (1976–1978). Civilian governance began in 1979 with Abubakar Tatari Ali of the National Party of Nigeria until a 1983 military coup. This was followed by a brief civilian regime from 1992 to 1993 under Dahiru Mohammed of the National Republican Convention, which was then toppled by a series of military governors and administrators that lasted until 1999. During this time, part of Bauchi was split off to form Gombe State in 1996. Democratic rule has continued in Bauchi since 1999, under Ahmadu Adamu Mu'azu from 1999 to 2007, Isa Yuguda from 2007 to 2015, Mohammed Abdullahi Abubakar (pictured) from 2015 to 2019, and the incumbent Bala Mohammed since 2019. (Full list...)

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Ibn Khaldun (1332–1406) was an Arab scholar, historian, philosopher, and sociologist. Born in Tunis into an upper-class Andalusian family of Arab descent, his family's high rank enabled him to study with prominent teachers in the Maghreb, where he received a classical Islamic education including the Quran, as well as mathematics, logic, and philosophy. He lost both his parents to the Black Death at the age of 17. As was traditional for members of his family, Ibn Khaldun then went on to have a career in politics. His best-known book is the Muqaddimah or Prolegomena (Introduction). This influenced 17th-century and 19th-century historians such as Kâtip Çelebi, Mustafa Naima and Ahmed Cevdet Pasha, who used its theories to analyse the growth and decline of the Ottoman Empire. Ibn Khaldun is regularly ranked among the most prominent Muslim and Arab scholars and historians in history. This bust of Ibn Khaldun is situated in the entrance of the kasbah in Béjaïa, Algeria.

Sculpture credit: unknown; photographed by Reda Kerbouche

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