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From yesterday's featured article

Meghan Trainor

"Mother" is a song by American singer-songwriter Meghan Trainor (pictured) from the deluxe edition of her fifth major-label studio album, Takin' It Back (2022). She wrote the song with Sean Douglas, and its producers, Gian Stone, and her brother Justin. Epic Records released it as the lead single on March 27, 2023. A pop song with doo-wop influences, "Mother" interpolates "Mr. Sandman". Inspired by men who said Trainor's pregnancy would end her career, the song is about women's empowerment; she asks the male subject to stop mansplaining and to listen to her. Critics were complimentary about the composition but criticized the use of the term "mother". The song reached the top 30 in Belgium, Ireland, Suriname, and the United Kingdom. Charm La'Donna directed the music video, which stars Kris Jenner; critics praised the fashion choices and described it as glamorous. Trainor performed the song on Today, Capital's Summertime Ball, and the Timeless Tour (2024). (This article is part of a featured topic: Takin' It Back.)

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Did you know ...

Grave of Kyai Maja

... that the grave (pictured) of Javanese spiritual leader Kyai Maja at his exile near Lake Tondano has become a site for pilgrimages?
... that a North Carolina TV station was originally named after its attorney?
... that the anti-Francoist guerrilla Marcelino Massana pranked the Civil Guard captain who was trying to kill him by paying for his coffee?
... that in college, field hockey player Maxine Fluharty was coached by a former national teammate of her mother?
... that the filming sets of A New Old Play were visibly fake, with shaking white fabrics and plastic bags used to mimic turbulent waves?
... that Laurie Schipper, who was inducted into the Iowa Women's Hall of Fame in 2022, testified to support a woman who murdered her abusive husband?
... that Sobrevivendo no Inferno by Racionais MC's, which critiques police violence and systemic racism in Brazil, was required reading for a university entrance examination?
... that lawyer Jefferson Fisher went viral after sharing short videos providing practical communication tips recorded in his parked pickup truck in Silsbee, Texas?

In the news (For today)

Robert Prevost

Robert Francis Prevost (pictured) 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.
Zhao Xintong defeats Mark Williams to win the World Snooker Championship.
In horse racing, Sovereignty, ridden by Junior Alvarado, wins the Kentucky Derby.
The Australian Labor Party increases its majority in the federal election.

On the previous day

May 11

HMS Beagle

868 – A copy of the Diamond Sutra was printed in Tang-dynasty China, making it the world's oldest dated printed book.
1820 – HMS Beagle (pictured), the ship that would take Charles Darwin on his voyage, was launched.
1889 – Bandits attacked a U.S. Army paymaster's escort in the Arizona Territory, stealing more than $28,000.
1970 – Lubbock, Texas, was struck by a tornado that left 26 people dead.
2010 – Gordon Brown resigned as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Leader of the Labour Party after failing to strike a coalition agreement with the Liberal Democrats.
2022 – Myanmar civil war: Government troops killed 37 unarmed civilians in Mondaingbin.

Richard Feynman (b. 1918)
Judy Ann Santos (b. 1978)
Zenna Henderson (d. 1983)

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Yesterday's featured picture

Ottmar Mergenthaler (11 May 1854 – 28 October 1899) was the inventor of the linotype machine, the first device that could easily and quickly set complete lines of type for use in printing presses. Mergenthaler was born into a German family in Hachtel in the Kingdom of Württemberg. He was apprenticed to a watchmaker in Bietigheim before emigrating to the United States in 1872 to work in Washington, D.C., with his cousin August Hahl. In 1876, Mergenthaler was approached by James O. Clephane and his associate Charles T. Moore, who sought a quicker way of publishing legal briefs. By 1884, he conceived the idea of assembling metallic letter molds, called matrices, and casting molten metal into them, all within a single machine. In July 1886, the Mergenthaler Linotype Company installed the first commercially used Linotype in the printing office of the New-York Tribune. This photograph shows Mergenthaler at approximately 45 years of age in 1899; he died that year in Baltimore of tuberculosis.

Photograph credit: unknown; restored by Adam Cuerden

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