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From today's featured article

Margaret Sanger (September 14, 1879 – September 6, 1966) was an American birth control activist, sex educator, and nurse. She opened the first birth control clinic in the United States, founded Planned Parenthood, and was instrumental in the development of the first birth control pill. She was an important first-wave feminist and believed that women should be able to decide if and when to have children. Sanger campaigned for the legalization of contraceptives by giving speeches, writing books, and breaking laws – leading to eight arrests. She endorsed both the Malthusianism and eugenics movements, believing that they would generate support for birth control. She established a network of dozens of birth control clinics, which provided services to hundreds of thousands of patients. She discouraged abortion, and her clinics never offered abortion services during her lifetime. Her activism led to the Griswold v. Connecticut decision, which legalized contraception. (Full article...)

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Did you know ...

Vincent de Groof's flying machine

... that Vincent de Groof successfully tested his bat-like flying machine (pictured) in 1874, only to die after crashing it 10 days later?
... that the theatre which premiered a play about sex offenders had to hire additional security for its run?
... that visitors from various countries come to a temple to see a wild Chinese monkey named Xing Xing?
... that Fatima Hassouna was killed shortly after a documentary about her was announced for the 2025 Cannes Film Festival?
... that at a Destroy Lonely concert promoting an edition of his debut album, some fans entered his car?
... that Carl Jorgensen and Gust Zarnas were the first NFL players from Denmark and Greece?
... that in 1917 more than 8,000 African Americans protested lynchings by marching down New York City's Fifth Avenue in silence, accompanied only by the sound of muffled drums?
... that a Sicilian soldier killed his own family during an Ottoman attack on Gozo in 1551, to prevent them from being enslaved?
... that Costa Rica's most famous bull killed two men and loved mangos?

In the news

JJ

Austria, represented by JJ (pictured) with the song "Wasted Love", wins the Eurovision Song Contest.
Former president of Uruguay José Mujica dies at the age of 89.
The Kurdistan Workers' Party announces its dissolution, ending its insurgency against Turkey.
Robert Francis Prevost is elected as Pope Leo XIV, becoming the first Catholic pope born in the United States.
Friedrich Merz is elected Chancellor of Germany and sworn in alongside his coalition government.

On this day

May 18: Haitian Flag Day in Haiti (1803); Day of Remembrance for the Victims of Crimean Tatar Genocide in Ukraine

The Bath School after the explosions

1302 – Armed insurrectionists massacred the occupying French garrison in Bruges, Flanders, killing approximately 2,000 people.
1695 – An earthquake measuring M_s7.8 struck Shanxi Province in northern China, resulting in at least 52,600 deaths.
1927 – Disgruntled school board treasurer Andrew Kehoe set off explosives with timers and a rifle (aftermath pictured), causing the Bath School disaster in the Bath Consolidated School in Michigan, killing 44 people in the deadliest mass murder in a school in United States history.
2009 – The Sri Lanka Army killed Velupillai Prabhakaran, the leader and founder of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, to bring an end to the 26-year Sri Lankan civil war.

Thomas Midgley Jr. (b. 1889)
Ester Boserup (b. 1910)
Jean-François Théodore (d. 2015)

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Today's featured picture

El Tatio is a geothermal field with many geysers located in the Andes Mountains of northern Chile at 4,320 metres (14,170 ft) above mean sea level. It is the third-largest geyser field in the world and the largest in the Southern Hemisphere. The geothermal field has many geysers, hot springs, and associated sinter deposits. These hot springs eventually form the Rio Salado, a major tributary of the Rio Loa, and are a major source of arsenic pollution in the river. The vents are sites of populations of extremophile microorganisms such as hyperthermophiles, and El Tatio has been studied as an analogue for the early Earth and possible past life on Mars.

Photograph credit: Diego Delso

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