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From today's featured article

Courtesans photographed by Farsari

Adolfo Farsari (11 February 1841 – 7 February 1898) was an Italian photographer based in Yokohama, Japan. Following a brief military career, including service in the American Civil War, he became a successful entrepreneur and commercial photographer. His photographic work was highly regarded, particularly his hand-coloured portraits and landscapes, which he sold mostly to foreign residents and visitors to the country. Farsari's images were widely distributed, presented or mentioned in books and periodicals, and sometimes recreated by artists in other media; they shaped foreign perceptions of the people and places of Japan and to some degree affected how Japanese saw themselves and their country. His studio – the last notable foreign-owned studio in Japan – was one of the country's largest and most prolific commercial photographic firms. Largely due to Farsari's exacting technical standards and entrepreneurial abilities, it had a significant influence on the development of photography in Japan. (Full article...)

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Did you know ...

Nesselrode pudding

... that novelist Susie Boyt described Nesselrode pudding (example pictured) as tasting "of Christmas, without any of the disappointment"?
... that, according to Guyanese authorities, an oil tanker seized by the United States off the coast of Venezuela in 2025 was falsely flying Guyana's flag?
... that a 70-foot (21 m) statue of Lionel Messi was unveiled in India during his G.O.A.T. India Tour?
... that "Right Here, Right Now" was Giorgio Moroder's first song in 15 years to reach the top of the US Dance Club Songs chart?
... that future Slavic-language professor Marc L. Greenberg learned Slovene after his partner sent him a bilingual dictionary and started writing letters to him only in Slovene?
... that the Genshin Impact character Alhaitham is believed to be named after a polymath from the Islamic Golden Age?
... that Diego García Miravete and his college football team's games were closely monitored by the Mexican government in the early 1970s?
... that Erykah Badu recorded Mama's Gun at what was once Jimi Hendrix's apartment?
... that some reviewers thought that A Short Hike was too short?

In the news

Anutin Charnvirakul

In the Thai general election, the Bhumjaithai Party, led by Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul (pictured), wins the most seats in the House of Representatives.
In American football, the Seattle Seahawks defeat the New England Patriots to win the Super Bowl.
The Liberal Democratic Party, led by Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, wins a landslide victory in the Japanese general election.
A suicide attack at a mosque during Friday prayers kills at least 33 people in Islamabad, Pakistan.

On this day

February 11: Little New Year in southern China (2026); National Foundation Day in Japan

Location of the Carnival tragedy of 1823

1584 – Spanish explorer Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa founded the town of Nombre de Jesús, the first of two short-lived colonies at the Strait of Magellan.
1823 – Around 110 boys were killed in a human crush at the Convent of the Minori Osservanti (corridor pictured) in Valletta on the last day of the Maltese Carnival.
1938 – The BBC aired an adaptation of a section of Czech writer Karel Čapek's play R.U.R. in the first broadcast of science fiction on television.
2015 – Turkish student Özgecan Aslan was murdered during a rape attempt, sparking mass demonstrations across the country after her body was discovered two days later.
2018 – Saratov Airlines Flight 703 crashed shortly after take-off in Russia due to icing conditions, killing all 71 people on board.

Ellen Day Hale (b. 1855; d. 1940)
Ellen Broe (b. 1900)
Heinz Winbeck (b. 1946)
Kelly Rowland (b. 1981)

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From today's featured list

Map of Mexico with Oaxaca highlighted

There are 570 municipalities in the state of Oaxaca in southern Mexico, more than in any other Mexican state. According to Oaxaca's constitution, the municipalities are grouped into 30 judicial and tax districts to facilitate the distribution of the state's revenues. It is the only state in Mexico with this particular organization of judicial and tax districts. Municipalities are responsible for public services (such as water and sewage), street lighting, public safety, traffic, and the maintenance of public parks, gardens and cemeteries. Oaxaca is the tenth-most-populated Mexican state, with 4,132,148 inhabitants as of the 2020 Mexican census, and the fifth-largest by land area spanning 93,757.6 square kilometres (36,200.0 sq mi). The largest municipality by population as of the 2020 census is Oaxaca de Juárez, the state capital, with 270,955 residents (6.55 percent of the state's total), while the smallest is Santa Magdalena Jicotlán, with 81 residents, and the least populated municipality in Mexico. (Full list...)

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Today's featured picture

Ilulissat is the municipal seat and largest town of the municipality of Avannaata in western Greenland. It is located on the eastern shore of Disko Bay, just north of the Ilulissat Icefjord World Heritage Site, and approximately 350 km (220 mi) north of the Arctic Circle. With a population of 5,149 as of 2025, it is the third-largest city in Greenland, after Nuuk and Sisimiut. The area around the town was inhabited by Inuit peoples from prehistoric times, with evidence of Saqqaq and Dorset settlements. Dutch whalers traded extensively with the local population from the 17th cenutry and referred to the area as Maklykout. Ilulissat was later established as a trading post by Jacob Severin's company in 1741, and was named in his honor after the Battle of Jacobshavn, in which Danish forces defeated the Dutch whalers. The town was the site of the Arctic Ocean Conference in 2008, in which representatives from Canada, Denmark, Norway, Russia and the United States met to discuss territorial claims in the Arctic. This 2024 photograph shows a panorama of Ilulissat taken from the south west.

Photograph credit: Ekrem Canli

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