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From today's featured article

The Impartial Scout of June 1650, mentioning Alkin

Elizabeth Alkin (c. 1600 – c. 1655) was a publisher, nurse and spy for the Parliamentarian forces during the English Civil War (1642–1651). She was also commonly known as Parliamentary Joan, one of many derogatory names she was called by royalist sympathisers. Little is known about Alkin's early life. Her husband was arrested and hanged in 1643 by the royalists during the English Civil War for spying for the Parliamentarians; Alkin continued his work, spying in Oxford—the royalist wartime capital—even during the city's siege. By 1648 Alkin was involved in selling and then publishing Parliamentary newsbooks (example pictured)—the forerunners of newspapers. She used her role as a vendor to track down and report several publishers of royalist material. After the civil war, Alkin nursed casualties of the First Anglo-Dutch War, initially in Portsmouth, then Harwich and Ipswich. With her health failing she returned to London. It is presumed she died shortly afterwards, possibly over the 1655 Christmas period. (Full article...)

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Did you know ...

Michael Menzinger

... that, after previous officials had "wanted to leave as soon as possible", Michael Menzinger (pictured) applied to become governor of Liechtenstein and served 28 years?
... that the Indian emperor Jahangir commissioned a painting depicting his superiority over his rival, the Shah of Iran?
... that Dolores Jiménez y Muro staged a hunger strike from prison while she was in her sixties and in poor health?
... that Taking Back Sunday's emo single "Cute Without the 'E' (Cut from the Team)" was influenced by rapper Jay-Z?
... that the Siderian is currently the earliest internationally recognized geological period?
... that Yi Yangwŏn died after fasting for eight days in grief when he heard a false rumor that King Seonjo had fled across the border into Liaodong?
... that, to help the 1989 Japan Cup winner Horlicks overcome homesickness from traveling to Japan for the race, her trainer used a dressing mirror to make her believe she had a stablemate?
... that Paula Ben-Gurion, the wife of the first prime minister of Israel, was sympathetic to anarchism and anti-Zionism?
... that two scholars traveled to a St. Louis mansion to study a urinal?

In the news

Faustin-Archange Touadéra

Following a Saudi-led offensive, Yemeni government forces take control of Aden, the capital of the Southern Transitional Council.
Faustin-Archange Touadéra (pictured) is re-elected as the president of the Central African Republic.
Delcy Rodríguez is sworn in as the interim president of Venezuela following the capture of Nicolás Maduro during United States strikes on the capital.
Luke Littler wins the PDC World Darts Championship.

On this day

January 12: Zanzibar Revolution Day in Tanzania (1964); Eugenio María de Hostos's birthday in Puerto Rico (2026)

St Mary's Church, Reculver

475 – Basiliscus became Byzantine emperor after Zeno was forced to flee Constantinople.
1808 – John Rennie's scheme to defend St Mary's Church (pictured) in Reculver from coastal erosion was abandoned in favour of demolition, despite the church being an exemplar of Anglo-Saxon architecture.
1895 – The National Trust, a conservation organisation in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, was founded.
1916 – Oswald Boelcke and Max Immelmann became the first German aviators to be awarded the Pour le Mérite, Germany's highest military honour.
2010 – An earthquake registering 7.0 M_w struck Haiti, killing more than 100,000 people.

Étienne Lenoir (b. 1822)
Austin Chapman (d. 1926)
Agatha Christie (d. 1976)
Zhansaya Abdumalik (b. 2000)

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From today's featured list

Kim Seon-ho

South Korean actor Kim Seon-ho has been recognized with numerous awards and nominations in film and television. He has won a Baeksang Arts Award, one Blue Dragon Film Award, one Grand Bell Award, and a Buil Film Award. Kim has also won nine times at the Asia Artist Awards. In the year of his television debut, Kim won Best New Actor and the Excellence Award for an Actor in a Monday–Tuesday Drama at the 2017 MBC Drama Awards for his role in the drama Two Cops (2017). Kim's breakthrough role in Start-Up (2021) earned him the Most Popular Actor award at the 57th Baeksang Arts Awards, alongside a nomination for Best Supporting Actor – Television at the same ceremony. Kim made his feature film debut in Park Hoon-jung's noir The Childe (2023), where he was given top-billing status. His portrayal of the nobleman in The Childe earned critical acclaim, leading to his winning the New Actor award at the 32nd Buil Film Awards and the 59th Grand Bell Awards. (Full list...)

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Today's featured picture

Antonio de Ulloa (12 January 1716 – 3 July 1795) was a Spanish Navy officer. He spent much of his career in Spanish America, where he carried out important scientific work. As a scientist, Ulloa is regarded as one of the major figures of the Spanish Enlightenment. At the age of nineteen, Ulloa joined the French Geodesic Mission to the Equator, which established that the shape of the Earth is an oblate spheroid, flattened at the poles, as predicted by Isaac Newton. Ulloa traveled throughout the territories of the Viceroyalty of Peru from 1736 to 1744, making many astronomical, natural, and social observations. He published the first detailed observations of platinum, later identified as a new chemical element. As a military officer, Ulloa achieved the rank of vice admiral. He also served the Spanish Empire as an administrator in the Viceroyalty of Peru and in Spanish Louisiana. This posthumous oil portrait of Ulloa was painted by Andrés Cortés in 1856. Originally in the Palacio de San Telmo, the painting was donated by Infanta Luisa Fernanda to the City Council of Seville in 1898, and now hangs in Seville City Hall.

Painting credit: Andrés Cortés

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