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Zhang Jingsheng (20 February 1888 – 18 June 1970) was a Chinese philosopher and sexologist. Born to merchants in rural Guangdong, he was a militant supporter of the Tongmenghui revolutionaries. After being expelled from school, Zhang entered Peking University and became an advocate for European ideas of social Darwinism, scientific racism, and eugenics. He changed his personal name to Jingsheng, meaning 'competition for survival'. After the 1911 Revolution, Zhang went to France to study philosophy, receiving his doctorate in 1919. He soon became a professor at Peking, publishing two books advocating for a utopian society arranged around aesthetics. In 1926, he published the sexology text Sex Histories. Zhang was ridiculed by the Chinese media and academia for this work, and tabloids gave him the mocking nickname Dr. Sex. After an unsuccessful bookstore venture in Shanghai, he returned home and worked in obscurity. Zhang was persecuted during the Cultural Revolution and died in confinement. (Full article...)

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Did you know ...

British troops burning a house in Bekasi

... that in 1945, British troops burned the town of Bekasi (pictured) in retaliation for the murders of passengers and crew of a downed British aircraft?
... that Indian member of parliament Hira Singh Chinaria died in his seat after delivering a speech?
... that the eventual location of Cancún's Hotel Zone was chosen in part by a computer program in the late 1960s?
... that orphaned Eliza Showell was sent to Nova Scotia from a British children's home and placed in indentured service?
... that brown cacholotes sing only in duets, mate for life, and share parental duties equally?
... that a thesis by Amelia Frank was cited by her doctoral advisor in his Nobel Prize speech more than forty years after her death?
... that the TV series Beartown cast real junior hockey players rather than relying on stunt doubles?
... that when a nightclub located in an old spaghetti factory was shut down for fire code violations, a troupe of flamenco dancers collected signatures in protest?
... that the alliance led by Siles split from the alliance led by Siles?

In the news

José Jerí

José Jerí (pictured) is removed as the president of Peru by Congress, and replaced by José María Balcázar.
American civil rights leader Jesse Jackson dies at the age of 84.
The Nationalist Party, led by Tarique Rahman, wins the Bangladeshi general election.
In the Barbadian general election, the Labour Party wins a third term and every seat in the House of Assembly.

On this day

February 20: Day of the Heavenly Hundred Heroes in Ukraine (2014)

Depiction of the Kraków Uprising

1816 – The Barber of Seville, an opera buffa composed by Gioachino Rossini, premiered at the Teatro Argentina in Rome to jeers from the audience.
1846 – Polish insurgents in the Free City of Kraków led an uprising (depicted) attempting to incite a fight for national independence that was put down by the Austrian Empire nine days later.
1931 – Paraguayan anarchists briefly seized the city of Encarnación as part of a larger plan to initiate a social revolution in the country.
1943 – The Saturday Evening Post published the first of Norman Rockwell's Four Freedoms, among the most widely distributed paintings ever produced, in support of U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt's Four Freedoms.
1965 – The NASA spacecraft Ranger 8 spacecraft transmitted 7,137 photographs of the Moon in the final 23 minutes of its mission before crashing as planned into Mare Tranquillitatis.

Judith Montefiore (b. 1784)
Forbes Burnham (b. 1923)
Percy Grainger (d. 1961)
Audrey Munson (d. 1996)

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Billy Wilder with Gloria Swanson

The filmography of Billy Wilder, an American filmmaker, comprises 50 films from 1929 to 1981. Billy Wilder's first screenplay was for the German silent thriller The Daredevil Reporter (1929). In 1938, he began collaborating with Charles Brackett on screenplays with Ernst Lubitsch's romantic comedy Bluebeard's Eighth Wife. It was the first of 14 consecutive commercially successful films co-written by Wilder and Brackett, including the comedy Ninotchka (1939) and the romantic drama Hold Back the Dawn (1941). In 1944, Wilder directed and co-wrote the screenplay for the film noir Double Indemnity, which is considered to be a classic of its genre. He followed this with The Lost Weekend (1945), a drama about a writer struggling with alcoholism, for which Wilder won his first Academy Award for Best Director and shared the Best Original Screenplay award with Brackett. He won his second Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay with Brackett for Sunset Boulevard (1950), as well as the Writers Guild of America Award for Best Written Drama. During the 1950s, Wilder also received Best Director nominations at the Oscars for Stalag 17 (1953), Sabrina (1954), Witness for the Prosecution (1957), and Some Like It Hot (1959). (Full list...)

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Today's featured picture

The BL 60-pounder gun was a British 5-inch (127 mm) heavy field gun designed in 1903–1905 to provide a new capability that had been partially met by the interim QF 4.7-inch (120 mm) gun. It was designed for both horse draft and mechanical traction, and served throughout the First World War in the main theatres. It remained in service with British and Commonwealth forces in the inter-war period and in frontline service with British and South African batteries until 1942, being superseded by the BL 4.5-inch (110 mm) medium gun. Shortly after the Armistice of 1918, some 60-pounders were donated to the United States to resolve outstanding contractual obligations, although most were never used, eventually going to scrap drives in the Second World War or put on display as memorials. This 1915 photograph, taken by Ernest Brooks, shows a British Army artillery unit with a 60-pounder Mk I gun in action on a cliff top at Cape Helles, during the Gallipoli campaign of the First World War. The gun has the inscription "Annie" painted on the barrel.

Photograph credit: Ernest Brooks

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