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May 27

SMS Lothringen was the last of five pre-dreadnought battleships of the Braunschweig class built for the Imperial German Navy. Launched in May 1904, she was named for the then-German province of Lothringen. The ship was armed with a battery of four 28 cm (11 in) guns and had a top speed of 18 knots (33 km/h; 21 mph). She was to be replaced in July 1914 by dreadnought battleships but World War I prevented her retirement. The ship and the rest of II Squadron joined the dreadnoughts of the High Seas Fleet to support a raid on Scarborough, Hartlepool, and Whitby in December 1914. She primarily served as a guard ship in the German Bight; in poor condition by 1916, she was withdrawn from fleet service in February. She thereafter patrolled the Danish straits until replaced by the battleship Hannover in September 1917. After the war, she was converted into a depot ship for F-type minesweepers and placed in reserve in March 1920. (This article is part of a featured topic: Battleships of Germany.)

May 27: Memorial Day in the United States

Manchu Prince Dorgon

• 1644 – Manchu regent Dorgon (depicted) defeated rebel leader Li Zicheng of the Shun dynasty at the Battle of Shanhai Pass, allowing the Manchus to enter and conquer the capital city of Beijing.
• 1799 – War of the Second Coalition: Austrian forces defeated the French Army of the Danube, capturing the strategically important Swiss town of Winterthur.
• 1954 – The security clearance of American nuclear physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, head of Project Y, was revoked.
• 1967 – Australians voted overwhelmingly for the number of Indigenous Australians to be included in population counts for constitutional purposes and for the federal government to make laws for their benefit.

May 27

Exo

In 2015, 35 singles reached number one on the Music Bank Chart, and 27 acts were awarded first-place trophies. The Music Bank Chart is a record chart established in 1998 on the South Korean KBS television music program Music Bank. Every week during its live broadcast, the show gives an award for the best-performing single on the South Korean chart. Of all releases for the year, "Call Me Baby" by Exo (pictured) acquired the highest point total on the April 10 broadcast, with a score of 12,681, and along with "Lion Heart" by Girls' Generation was ranked number one on the chart for four consecutive weeks, making both singles the most-awarded songs of the year. The first winner of the year was "December, 2014 (The Winter's Tale)" by Exo, which debuted at number one on the January 2 broadcast. The group had four number one singles on the chart in 2015. Girls' Generation had their 100th music-show win on the July 17 broadcast with their win for "Party", becoming the first artist to do so in South Korean music show history. (Full list...)

May 27

Wheat Fields is a series of dozens of paintings by Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh. The close association of peasants and the cycles of nature particularly interested Van Gogh, such as the sowing of seeds, harvest and sheaves of wheat in the fields. Van Gogh saw plowing, sowing and harvesting symbolic to man's efforts to overwhelm the cycles of nature. This oil-on-canvas Wheat Fields painting, also sometimes known as Wheat Field with Alpilles Foothills in the Background, was created in June 1888 and is now in the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. Painting credit: Vincent van Gogh Recently featured: Giechburg Plains-wanderer Ethel Smyth Archive More featured pictures

May 28

Crypt of Worcester Cathedral

Nicholas of Worcester (died 1124) was the prior of the Benedictine priory of Worcester Cathedral (crypt pictured) from about 1115 until his death. He was born around the time of the Norman Conquest. It is not known who his parents were, but William of Malmesbury wrote that he was "of exalted descent", and it has been argued that he was a son of King Harold Godwinson. Nicholas was the favourite pupil of Wulfstan, the bishop of Worcester, who brought him up. Wulfstan was influential in transmitting Old English culture to Anglo-Norman England, and Nicholas carried on this work as prior. He was respected by the chroniclers William of Malmesbury, John of Worcester and Eadmer for his assistance with their histories. Nicholas was an English monk at a time when both Englishmen and monks rarely received promotion in the church, and when Bishop Theulf of Worcester died in October 1123, Nicholas led an unsuccessful attempt of the monks of the priory chapter to be allowed to choose the next bishop. (Full article...)

May 28: Republic Day in Armenia (1918); Independence Day in Azerbaijan (1918)

Mozaffar ad-Din

• 585 BC – According to the Greek historian Herodotus, a solar eclipse, accurately predicted by Thales of Miletus, abruptly ended the Battle of Halys between the Lydians and the Medes.
• 1644 – English Civil War: Royalist troops stormed and captured the Parliamentarian stronghold of Bolton, leading to a massacre of defenders and local residents.
• 1754 – French and Indian War: Led by 22-year-old George Washington, a company of Virginia colonial militiamen ambushed a force of 35 Canadiens at the Battle of Jumonville Glen .
• 1901 – Mozaffar ad-Din (pictured), Shah of Persia, granted exclusive rights to prospect for oil in the country to William Knox D'Arcy.
• 1937 – The rise of Neville Chamberlain culminated with his accession as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, being summoned to Buckingham Palace to "kiss hands".
• 2002 – An independent commission appointed by the Football Association voted two-to-one to allow Wimbledon F.C. to relocate from London to Milton Keynes.

May 28

Acraea terpsicore, commonly known as the tawny coster, is a species of butterfly in the Nymphalidae family, the brush-footed butterflies. It is found across eastern Asia from India and Sri Lanka to Singapore, Indonesia and the Maldives and, more recently, Australia. It is small, with a size of 53–64 millimetres (2.1–2.5 in), has leathery wings and is common in grassland and scrub habitats. Acraea terpsicore has a weak fluttery flight and is avoided by most insect predators. This A. terpsicore individual was photographed in Komodo National Park, Indonesia. Photograph credit: Charles J. Sharp Recently featured: Wheat Fields Giechburg Plains-wanderer Archive More featured pictures

May 29

The Beulé Gate is a fortified gate leading to the Propylaia of the Acropolis of Athens, Greece. It was constructed largely of repurposed material taken from the 4th-century BCE Choragic Monument of Nikias and integrated into the Post-Herulian Wall, a late Roman fortification built around the Acropolis in the years following the city's sack by the Germanic Heruli people in 267 or early 268 CE. Its construction marked the beginning of a new phase in the Acropolis's use, in which it came to be seen more as a defensive position than a religious sanctuary. During the medieval period, the gate was further fortified, before being built over with a bastion in Ottoman times. The monument was discovered by the French archaeologist Charles Ernest Beulé on 29 May 1852, and excavated in 1852 and 1853. Archaeologists and Greek commentators criticised the aggressive excavation – particularly the use of explosives. In modern times, the gate has served primarily as an exit for tourists from the Acropolis. (Full article...)

May 29: Feast day of Saint Paul VI (Catholicism)

Hawthorne Bridge

• 1233 – Mongol–Jin War: The Mongols entered and began looting Kaifeng, the capital of the Jin dynasty of China, after a 13-month siege.
• 1416 – A squadron of the Venetian navy captured many Ottoman ships at the Battle of Gallipoli, confirming Venetian naval superiority in the Aegean Sea for the next few decades.
• 1913 – During the premiere of the ballet The Rite of Spring by Igor Stravinsky at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris, the avant-garde nature of the music and choreography caused a near-riot in the audience.
• 1999 – Charlotte Perrelli, representing Sweden, won the Eurovision Song Contest with the song in the first contest not to feature an orchestra or live accompaniment.
• 2011 – Residents of Portland, Oregon, held a rally called Hands Across Hawthorne in response to an attack against a gay couple holding hands while crossing the Hawthorne Bridge (pictured).

May 29

Lake Estancia was a body of water in the Estancia Valley, in the center of the U.S. state of New Mexico. Mostly fed by creek and groundwater from the Manzano Mountains, the lake had diverse fauna, including cutthroat trout. It appears to have formed when a river system broke up. It reached a maximum water level (highstand) presumably during the Illinoian glaciation and subsequently fluctuated between a desiccated basin and fuller stages. Wind-driven erosion has excavated depressions in the former lakebed that are in part filled with playas (dry lake beds). The lake was one of several pluvial lakes in southwestern North America that developed during the late Pleistocene. Their formation has been variously attributed to decreased temperatures during the ice age and increased precipitation; a shutdown of the thermohaline circulation and the Laurentide Ice Sheet altered atmospheric circulation patterns and increased precipitation in the region. The lake has yielded a good paleoclimatic record. This map shows the position of the former shorelines of Lake Estancia. Map credit: Tom Fish Recently featured: Acraea terpsicore Wheat Fields Giechburg Archive More featured pictures

May 30

Firefighter watching the Boundary Fire

The Boundary Fire was a 2017 wildfire in Arizona that burned 17,788 acres (7,199 ha) of the Coconino and Kaibab National Forests. The fire was ignited on June 1 when lightning struck a spot on the northeast side of Kendrick Peak within the Coconino National Forest. The fire spread rapidly because of high temperatures, steep terrain, leftovers from a wildfire in 2000, and high wind speeds. The winds blew smoke over local communities and infrastructure, leading to the closure of U.S. Route 180 from June 8 to June 21. Smoke was also visible from the Grand Canyon. The Boundary Fire burned out on July 3, 2017, after 32 days of firefighting. The cost of managing the fire was $9.4 million (equivalent to $11.5 million in 2023). Damage to the area's foliage increased the risk of landslides into 2018. The Boundary Fire was one of 2,321 wildfires in Arizona in 2017 that burned a total of 429,564 acres (173,838 ha). (Full article...)

May 30: Statehood Day in Croatia (1990)

Johann Sebastian Bach

• 1431 – Hundred Years' War: After being convicted of heresy, Joan of Arc was burned at the stake in Rouen, France.
• 1723 – Johann Sebastian Bach (pictured) assumed the office of Thomaskantor in Leipzig, presenting the cantata, Die Elenden sollen essen, BWV 75, in the St. Nicholas Church.
• 1943 – The first game of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, the forerunner of women's professional league sports in the United States, was played.
• 1963 – Buddhist crisis: A protest against pro-Catholic discrimination was held outside South Vietnam's National Assembly, the first open demonstration against President Ngô Đình Diệm.
• 1998 – An earthquake registering 6.5 M_w struck northern Afghanistan, killing at least 4,000 people, destroying more than 30 villages, and leaving 45,000 people homeless.

May 30

A peanut, also known as a groundnut, is the fruit of the Arachis hypogaea plant, in the family Fabaceae. The peanut is classed as a grain legume rather than as a botanical nut, although in culinary and colloquial use it is generally treated as a nut. Uses of peanuts include consumption as a snack and in various dishes, peanut butter, and - due to its high oil content - as a vegetable oil. Peanuts also cause allergic reactions in some humans. This photograph shows a peanut in its shell, with the shell cracked open, shelled, and peeled. Photograph credit: Ivar Leidus Recently featured: Lake Estancia Acraea terpsicore Wheat Fields Archive More featured pictures

May 31

Castle of Guînes in 2012

The siege of Guînes took place from May to July 1352 when a French army under Geoffrey de Charny unsuccessfully attempted to recapture the French castle (pictured) at Guînes which had been seized by the English the previous January. The siege was part of the Hundred Years' War and took place during the uneasy and ill-kept truce of Calais. The strongly fortified castle had been taken by the English during a period of nominal truce and the English king, Edward III, decided to keep it. Charny led 4,500 men and retook the town but was unable to either recapture or blockade the castle. After two months of fierce fighting, a large English night attack on the French camp inflicted a heavy defeat and the French withdrew. Guînes was incorporated into the Pale of Calais. The threat posed by this enclave caused the French to garrison 60 fortified positions around it, at ruinous expense. The castle was besieged by the French in 1436 and 1514, but was relieved each time, before falling to the French in 1558. (Full article...)

May 31: World No Tobacco Day

Bessarion

• 455 – Petronius Maximus, ruler of the Western Roman Empire, was stoned to death by a mob as he fled Rome ahead of the arrival of a Vandal force that sacked the city.
• 1223 – Mongol invasion of Kievan Rus': Mongol forces defeated a Kievan Rus' army at the Kalka River in present-day Ukraine.
• 1468 – Cardinal Bessarion (pictured) announced his donation of 746 Greek and Latin codices to the Republic of Venice, forming the Biblioteca Marciana.
• 1935 – An earthquake registering 7.7 M_w struck Balochistan in British India, now part of Pakistan, killing between 30,000 and 60,000 people.
• 2013 – A tornado struck Central Oklahoma, killing 8 people and injuring more than 150.

May 31

Marc Lieb

As of 2023, 135 drivers and 51 teams have won a European Le Mans Series title. The European Le Mans Series (ELMS) is a European endurance motor racing championship organised by the umbrella organisation Le Mans Endurance Management and administered by the Automobile Club de l'Ouest (ACO) automobile club. The ACO awards European championships and trophies to the most successful drivers and teams in each of the series' categories over the course of a season. Marc Lieb (pictured) is the most successful ELMS driver with four championships and Proton Competition are the series' most successful team with six titles. There have been 83 drivers and 33 teams who have won a title in the Le Mans Prototype (LMP) classes. Paul-Loup Chatin and Emmanuel Collard have earned the most LMP drivers' titles with three each and G-Drive Racing have achieved the most LMP teams' championships with four. (Full list...)

May 31

The common moorhen (Gallinula chloropus) is a bird species in the rail family, Rallidae. It is distributed across many parts of the Old World, from Africa to Europe and Asia. It lives around well-vegetated marshes, ponds, canals and other wetlands. A midsized to large rail, the common moorhen ranges in length from 30 to 38 cm (12 to 15 in) in length and span 50 to 62 cm (20 to 24 in) across the wings. It gives a wide range of gargling calls and will emit loud hisses when threatened. This common moorhen was photographed in the Parc des Chanteraines near Gennevilliers in the suburbs of Paris, France. Photograph credit: Alexis Lours Recently featured: Peanut Lake Estancia Acraea terpsicore Archive More featured pictures

June 1

Palace with northern courtyard

Ludwigsburg Palace is a 452-room palace complex of 18 buildings in Ludwigsburg, Baden-Württemberg, Germany. It is the largest palatial estate in the country and has been called the "Versailles of Swabia". Eberhard Louis, Duke of Württemberg, began construction of the palace in 1704. The son of his successor, Charles Eugene, completed it and refurbished parts in the Rococo style, especially its theatre. Charles Eugene abandoned the palace in 1775, and it began a decline until the future Duke, and then King, Frederick moved in in 1795. As King, Frederick, and his Queen, Charlotte, renovated the entirety of the palace in the Neoclassical style. The palace was opened to the public in 1918. It underwent periods of restoration, including for its tricentenary in 2004. It has hosted the Ludwigsburg Festival annually since 1947. The palace is surrounded by gardens named Blooming Baroque (Blühendes Barock), laid out in 1954 as they might have appeared in 1800. (Full article...)

June 1

The Defence at the Battle of the First of June, 1794

• 1794 – French Revolutionary Wars: A British fleet captured six ships of the line from the French in a battle off Ushant (pictured) that came to be known as the Glorious First of June.
• 1857 – The Revolution of the Ganhadores, the first general strike in Brazil, began in Salvador, Bahia.
• 1868 – The Navajo tribe and the U.S. government signed an agreement, allowing those interned at Fort Sumner to return to their ancestral lands.
• 1974 – In an informal article in a medical journal, Henry Heimlich introduced the concept of abdominal thrusts, commonly known as the Heimlich maneuver, to treat choking victims.
• 1988 – The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty was ratified, banning all American and Soviet land-based missiles with a range of 500 to 5,500 km (310 to 3,420 mi).

June 1

The featured picture for this day has not yet been chosen.

In general, pictures of the day are scheduled in order of promotion to featured status. See Wikipedia:Picture of the day/Guidelines for full guidelines.

June 2

Hall's A Concise Anglo-Saxon Dictionary

John Richard Clark Hall (1855–1931) was a British scholar of Old English, and a barrister. Hall's A Concise Anglo-Saxon Dictionary (shown) became a widely used work upon its 1894 publication, and after multiple revisions remains in print as of 2021. His 1901 prose translation of Beowulf was still the canonical introduction to the poem into the 1960s; some later editions included a prefatory essay by J. R. R. Tolkien. Hall's other work on Beowulf included a metrical translation in 1914, and the translation and collection of Knut Stjerna's Swedish papers on the poem in the 1912 work Essays on Questions Connected with the Old English Poem of Beowulf. In the final decade of his life, Hall's writings took to a Christian theme. The Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge published two of his works in this time: Herbert Tingle, and Especially his Boyhood, and Birth-Control and Self-Control. Hall worked as a clerk at the Local Government Board in Whitehall, becoming principal clerk in 1898. (Full article...)

June 2: Festa della Repubblica in Italy (1946)

Elizabeth II on her coronation day

• 1805 – Napoleonic Wars: A Franco-Spanish fleet recaptured the British-held Diamond Rock, an uninhabited island at the entrance to the bay leading to Fort-de-France, Martinique.
• 1886 – The wedding of Grover Cleveland and Frances Folsom took place in the White House, the only time a U.S. president used that building for the ceremony.
• 1953 – Queen Elizabeth II (pictured) was crowned at Westminster Abbey in London.
• 1967 – Benno Ohnesorg, a German university student, was killed in West Berlin while protesting against the visit of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi of Iran; the anarchist militant 2 June Movement was later named after the incident.
• 1983 – After an emergency landing due to an in-flight fire, 23 passengers aboard Air Canada Flight 797 were killed when a flashover occurred as the aircraft's doors opened.

June 2

The featured picture for this day has not yet been chosen.

In general, pictures of the day are scheduled in order of promotion to featured status. See Wikipedia:Picture of the day/Guidelines for full guidelines.

June 3

James and Margaret Reed of the Donner Party

The Donner Party was a group of American pioneers who set out for California in a wagon train, but became snowbound in the Sierra Nevada mountains in November 1846. Running out of food, some resorted to cannibalism to survive. The journey west usually took between four and six months, but the Donner Party had been slowed by following a new route called the Hastings Cutoff, which crossed the Rocky Mountains' Wasatch Range and the Great Salt Lake Desert in present-day Utah. They lost many cattle and wagons in the rugged terrain, and divisions formed within the group. Their food supplies ran low after they became trapped by an early, heavy snowfall high in the mountains. In mid-December some of the group set out on foot and were able to obtain help. Of the 87 members of the party, 48 survived to reach California. Historians have described the episode as one of the most spectacular tragedies in California history. (Full article...)

June 3: Anniversary of Khomeini's Death in Iran (1989); Martyrs Day in Uganda; King's Official Birthday in New Zealand (2024); Western Australia Day (2024)

One of the last two great auks

• 1602 – Anglo-Spanish War: An English naval force defeated a Spanish-Portuguese fleet off Sesimbra, Portugal, and captured a carrack.
• 1844 – The last known pair of great auks (one pictured), the only modern species in the genus Pinguinus of flightless birds, were killed on Eldey, Iceland.
• 1968 – American radical feminist Valerie Solanas shot and wounded visual artist Andy Warhol and two others at Warhol's New York City studio, The Factory.
• 1973 – At the Paris Air Show, a Tupolev Tu-144 broke up in mid-air, killing all six members of its crew and eight bystanders on the ground.
• 1979 – Having invaded Uganda and deposed President Idi Amin, Tanzanian forces secured Uganda's western border, ending a seven-month war.

June 3

Alan Turing

The Turing Award is an annual prize given by the Association for Computing Machinery for contributions of lasting and major technical importance to computer science. It is generally recognized as the highest distinction in the field of computer science and is often referred to as the "Nobel Prize of Computing". The award is named after Alan Turing (pictured), who was a British mathematician and reader in mathematics at the University of Manchester. Turing is often credited as being the founder of theoretical computer science and artificial intelligence, and a key contributor to the Allied cryptanalysis of the Enigma cipher during World War II. The first recipient, in 1966, was Alan Perlis, of Carnegie Mellon University. The youngest recipient was Donald Knuth who won in 1974, at the age of 36, while the oldest recipient was Alfred Aho who won in 2020, at the age of 79. As of 2024, 77 people have been awarded the prize. (Full list...)

June 3

Laothoe populi, the poplar hawk-moth, is a moth of the family Sphingidae. It is found throughout the Palearctic realm and the Near East and is one of the most common members of the family in the region. The larva of this insect is pale green on first hatching, at which point it is known as a "hornworm", later developing yellow diagonal stripes on its sides, and pink spiracles. This photograph shows a late instar stage L. populi larva in the Parc du Marquenterre, Saint-Quentin-en-Tourmont, France. Photograph credit: Charles J. Sharp Recently featured: Common moorhen Archive More featured pictures