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From today's featured article

R. A. B. Mynors (28 July 1903 – 17 October 1989) was an English classicist and medievalist who held the senior chair of Latin at the universities of Oxford and Cambridge. He served as the Kennedy Professor of Latin at Cambridge from 1944 to 1953 and as the Corpus Christi Professor of Latin at Oxford from 1953 until his retirement in 1970. Mynors had the reputation of one of Britain's foremost classicists. A textual critic, he specialised in the study of manuscripts and their role in the reconstruction of classical texts. He was an expert on palaeography, and has been credited with unravelling a number of highly complex manuscript relationships. His publications include critical editions of Vergil, Catullus, and Pliny the Younger. In addition to receiving honorary degrees and fellowships from various institutions, Mynors was made a Knight Bachelor in 1963. He died in a car accident, aged 86. His comprehensive commentary on Vergil's Georgics was published posthumously. (Full article...)

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In the news

Japan National Stadium

The 2020 Summer Olympics open (stadium pictured) in Tokyo, Japan.
The Australian city of Brisbane is announced as the host city of the 2032 Summer Olympics.
In sumo, Terunofuji Haruo becomes the 73rd yokozuna.
Liverpool Maritime Mercantile City in England is stripped of its status as a UNESCO World Heritage Site due to modern development in the area.
Floods and landslides result in at least 71 deaths in Henan, China.

On this day

July 28

Ian Thorpe

1794 – French Revolution: Maximilien Robespierre and Louis Antoine de Saint-Just, architects of the Reign of Terror, were executed after their arrest on the previous day.
1821 – Peruvian War of Independence: Argentine general José de San Martín declared the independence of Peru from the Spanish Empire.
1915 – U.S. Marines landed at Port-au-Prince to begin a twenty-year occupation of Haiti.
1976 – An earthquake registering 7.6 M_w, one of the deadliest in history, devastated Tangshan, China, and killed at least 240,000 people.
2001 – At the World Aquatics Championships in Fukuoka, Japan, Australian Ian Thorpe (pictured) became the first swimmer to win six gold medals at a single FINA world championship.

Judith Leyster (bapt. 1609)
Ray Kennedy (b. 1951)
Ahmed Sofa (d. 2001)

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Today's featured picture

Carmen is an opera in four acts by the French composer Georges Bizet, with a libretto written by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy based on a novella by Prosper Mérimée. This lithographic poster, illustrated by Prudent-Louis Leray, advertised the opera's premiere, which took place in Paris on 3 March 1875. It was not initially a success; the audience at the Opéra-Comique was shocked by the drastic realism of the action and by the low standing and immorality of most of the characters. However, later that year, after Bizet's unexpected death, an adaptation by Ernest Guiraud performed by the Vienna Court Opera became a great success with the public, and Guiraud's version went on to achieve worldwide fame.

Poster credit: Prudent-Louis Leray; restored by Adam Cuerden

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