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From the day after tomorrow's featured article

De Kuip, venue of the 2015 KNVB Cup final

The 2015 KNVB Cup final was an association football match between PEC Zwolle and FC Groningen for the 97th KNVB Cup final, the Dutch Cup competition, played on 3 May 2015 at De Kuip in Rotterdam. PEC, the defending champions after their 5–1 victory over Ajax the previous year, were appearing in their fourth final. Groningen had reached the final once before, losing to PSV Eindhoven in 1989. PEC and Groningen entered the competition in the second round and progressed through five rounds to reach the final. Groningen scored 22 goals en route, the most of any team during the qualifying rounds. In front of more than 46,000 spectators, the first half ended goalless. The Slovak Albert Rusnák scored twice halfway through the second half, leading Groningen to a 2–0 victory and their first major honour. By winning the KNVB Cup, Groningen qualified for the 2015 Johan Cruyff Shield and the 2015–16 UEFA Europa League group stage. (Full article...)

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Did you know ...

Filodes fulvidorsalis drinking tears from a human eye

... that some insects drink the tears (example pictured) of their predators?
... that the Vatican's website was first made available in Latin under Pope Benedict XVI?
... that Blue Origin NS-31 recently became the first all-female spaceflight in 62 years?
... that a disused industrial pier was incorporated into a city park?
... that a cultivar of Aquilegia flabellata has been called "as beautiful as a columbine needs to be"?
... that George R. Dale was sent to prison by a judge whom he accused of being in the Ku Klux Klan?
... that the sled dog race Ivakkak features two mushers riding on the dog sled?
... that Major League Baseball's first Pride Night came about after a lesbian couple were removed from a Los Angeles Dodgers game for kissing?
... that people in parts of India, North America, and Africa marry tree trunks?

In the news (For today)

Mark Carney

In Canada, the Liberal Party, led by Prime Minister Mark Carney (pictured), wins the most seats in the federal election.
A major power outage affects most of the Iberian Peninsula.
An explosion and fire at the Port of Shahid Rajaee, Iran, kills at least 70 people and injures more than 1,200 others.
At least 11 people are killed in a car-ramming attack at a street festival in Vancouver, Canada.

In two days

May 3: World Press Freedom Day; Constitution Memorial Day in Japan (1947); Constitution Day in Poland (1791)

Benty Grange helmet

1481 – The largest of a series of earthquakes struck the island of Rhodes, causing an estimated 30,000 casualties.
1848 – The Benty Grange helmet (pictured), a boar-crested Anglo-Saxon helmet similar to those mentioned in the contemporary epic poem Beowulf, was discovered in Derbyshire, England.
1939 – Subhas Chandra Bose formed the All India Forward Bloc, a faction within the Indian National Congress, in opposition to Gandhi's tactics of nonviolence.
1999 – A Doppler on Wheels team measured the fastest winds recorded on Earth, at 135 m/s (302 mph; 486 km/h), in a tornado near Bridge Creek, Oklahoma.

Elizabeth Bacon (d. 1621)
Jacob Riis (b. 1849)
Bob McCallister (b. 1934)
Ron Hextall (b. 1964)

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Featured picture (Check back later for the day after tomorrow's.)

Raising a Flag over the Reichstag (Russian: Знамя Победы над Рейхстагом, romanized: Znamya Pobedy nad Reykhstagom, lit. 'Victory Banner over the Reichstag') is an iconic World War II photograph, taken during the Battle of Berlin on 2 May 1945 by Yevgeny Khaldei. The photograph was reprinted in thousands of publications and came to be regarded around the world as one of the most significant and recognizable images of World War II, but, owing to the secrecy of Soviet media, both the identity of photographer and the identities of the men in the picture were often disputed.

The Reichstag was seen as symbolic of, and at the heart of, Nazi Germany. It was arguably the most symbolic target in Berlin. After its capture on 2 May 1945, Khaldei scaled the now pacified Reichstag to take a picture. He was carrying with him a large flag, sewn from three tablecloths for this very purpose, by his uncle. The official story would later be that two hand-picked soldiers, Meliton Kantaria (Georgian) and Mikhail Yegorov (Russian), raised the Soviet flag over the Reichstag, However, according to Khaldei himself, when he arrived at the Reichstag, he simply asked the soldiers who happened to be passing by to help with the staging of the photoshoot; the one who was attaching the flag was 18-year-old Private Kovalev from Burlin, Kazakhstan; the two others were Abdulkhakim Ismailov from Dagestan and Leonid Gorychev (also mentioned as Aleksei Goryachev) from Minsk.

Photograph credit: Yevgeny Khaldei for TASS; restored by Adam Cuerden

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