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From today's featured article

Madonna in the Church (or The Virgin in the Church) is a small oil panel by the early Netherlandish painter Jan van Eyck. Probably executed between c. 1438–40, it depicts the Virgin Mary holding the Child Jesus in a Gothic cathedral. Mary is presented as Queen of Heaven wearing a jewel-studded crown, cradling a playful child Christ who gazes at her and grips the hem of her red dress in a manner that recalls the 13th-century Byzantine tradition of the Eleusa icon (Virgin of Tenderness). Tracery in the arch at the rear of the nave contains wooden carvings depicting episodes from Mary's life, while a faux bois sculpture in a niche shows her holding the child in a similar pose. Erwin Panofsky sees the painting composed as if the main figures in the panel are intended to be the sculptures come to life. (Full article...)

Did you know...

• ... that Lord Minginish is the first Gaelic-speaking Chairman of the Scottish Land Court?
• ... that NuScale Power has designed a line of small, modular nuclear reactors?
• ... that the United States Navy has ten Nimitz-class nuclear-powered aircraft carriers in service?
• ... that the President of the US, the Supreme Court and Congress are three significant branches of the US Government?
• ... that the Drudge Report had ten billion visits in the past year?
• ... that some people think approximately 300 years of phantom time were added to the Western calendar in the Early Middle Ages
• ... that the Sacred Heart Church in Exeter, England is the earliest surviving architectural work of Leonard Stokes?

In the news (from Infogalactic News)

• After Thousands Of Parents Refused To Comply Another CA School District Vax Mandate Falls
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• Ghislaine Maxwell Found Guilty of 5 Of 6 Charges
  Will She Be Epsteined?
• Aaron Rodgers: "If Science Can't Be Questioned, It's Not Science Anymore"
  "It's Propoganda"
  

• Jake Tapper's Producer Resigns From CNN
  Amid Pedo Scandal
• Israel Orders 100 Million Eggs Due To Bird Flu Outbreak
  Eggs And Hens Must Be Destroyed To Contain The Outbreak
• Twitter Suspends mRNA Tech Inventor Dr. Robert Malone
  Ran Counter To Covid Narrative
• Life Expectancy In 2020 Fell 2.3% To 77 Years
  Does This Justify The Covid Panic?
  

On this day...

April 3

• 801 – King Louis the Pious captures Barcelona from the Moors after a siege of several months.
• 1882 – American Old West: Jesse James is killed by Robert Ford.
• 1948 – United States President Harry S. Truman signs the Marshall Plan, authorizing $5 billion in aid for 16 countries.
• 1997 – The Thalit massacre begins in Algeria; all but one of the 53 inhabitants of Thalit are killed by guerrillas.
• 2000 – United States v. Microsoft Corp.: Microsoft is ruled to have violated United States antitrust law by keeping "an oppressive thumb" on its competitors.
• 2004 – Islamic terrorists involved in the 2004 Madrid train bombings are trapped by the police in their apartment and kill themselves.
• 2008 – Texas law enforcement cordons off the FLDS's YFZ Ranch. Eventually 533 women and children will be removed and taken into state custody.

• More anniversaries:
  • April 2
  • April 3
  • April 4

April 4

• 1609 – Philip III of Spain issues the decree of the "Expulsion of the Moriscos".
• 1796 – Georges Cuvier delivers the first paleontological lecture.
• 1859 – Bryant's Minstrels debut "Dixie" in New York City in the finale of a blackface minstrel show.
• 1866 – Alexander II of Russia narrowly escapes an assassination attempt by Dmitry Karakozov in the city of Saint Petersburg.
• 1925 – The Schutzstaffel (SS) is founded in Germany.
• 1973 – A Lockheed C-141 Starlifter, dubbed the Hanoi Taxi, makes the last flight of Operation Homecoming.
• 1991 – Senator John Heinz of Pennsylvania and six others are killed when a helicopter collides with their airplane over an elementary school in Merion, Pennsylvania.

• More anniversaries:
  • April 3
  • April 4
  • April 5

• 1081 – Alexios I Komnenos is crowned Byzantine emperor at Constantinople, bringing the Komnenian dynasty to full power.
• 1621 – The Mayflower sets sail from Plymouth, Massachusetts on a return trip to England.
• 1722 – The Dutch explorer Jacob Roggeveen discovers Easter Island.
• 1915 – Boxing challenger Jess Willard knocks out Jack Johnson in Havana, Cuba to become the Heavyweight Champion of the World.
• 1936 – Tupelo–Gainesville tornado outbreak: An F5 tornado kills 233 in Tupelo, Mississippi.
• 1944 – World War II: Two hundred seventy inhabitants of the Greek town of Kleisoura are executed by the Germans.
• 1956 – Fidel Castro declares himself at war with Cuban President Fulgencio Batista.

• More anniversaries:
  • April 4
  • April 5
  • April 6

Today's featured picture

Christ Carrying the Cross on his way to his crucifixion is an episode included in all four Gospels, and a very common subject in art, especially in the fourteen Stations of the Cross, sets of which are now found in almost all Catholic churches. However the subject occurs in many other contexts, including single works and cycles of the Life of Christ or the Passion of Christ. Alternative names include the Procession to Calvary, Road to Calvary and Way to Calvary, Calvary or Golgotha being the site of the crucifixion outside Jerusalem. The actual route taken is defined by tradition as the Via Dolorosa in Jerusalem, although the specific path of this route has varied over the centuries and continues to be the subject of debate. (Full article...)

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