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From today's featured article
Nizaa is an endangered Mambiloid language spoken in the Adamawa Region of northern Cameroon. Most of the language's speakers live in and around the village of Galim in the department of Faro-et-Déo. Nizaa has a complex sound system with 60 consonant phonemes, eleven tones, and a contrast between oral and nasal vowels. In terms of grammar, it is the only Bantoid language that allows multiple verbal suffixes on one verb. It also is neither a head-initial nor head-final language (the head or main element of a clause appears both before and after its modifiers with roughly equal frequency). Nizaa was first extensively documented in the 1980s by Norwegian linguists Rolf Theil Endresen (pictured) and Bjørghild Kjelsvik. The language is endangered, but the exact number of active speakers is unknown, as the last census of speakers took place in 1985, and a 1983 survey reported drastically different figures. (Full article...)
Did you know ...
- ... that a 13th-century wooden sculpture (pictured) of the bodhisattva Rāgarāja was carved from the debris of the Great Buddha Hall at Tōdai-ji in Nara, Japan?
- ... that Habib Mousa wrote a song about the village of Enhil to object to the Turkification of Assyrian villages in Tur Abdin?
- ... that the leading engineer during the 1702 siege of Liège was so angered by a colleague's disobedience that he threatened to abandon the siege?
- ... that A Far Better Thing is a retelling of Charles Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities with fairy changelings?
- ... that Soebekti Soenarto performed the duties of the governor, vice governor, and provincial secretary of the Special Region of Yogyakarta simultaneously for several weeks in 1998?
- ... that the roof designs of Bukit Gombak and Bukit Batok stations were based on the logo of the Singapore Housing and Development Board?
- ... that actor Rory Gibson was cast on The Young and the Restless despite the producers not liking his initial self-tape?
- ... that Antirrhinum barrelieri was split into two species in 1896, the other being Antirrhinum controversum?
- ... that Robert Uzgalis made the Leaning Tower of Pisa straight?
In the news
- In baseball, the Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks defeat the Hanshin Tigers to win the Japan Series (MVP Hotaka Yamakawa pictured).
- Hurricane Melissa leaves more than 40 people dead across the Caribbean.
- More than 120 people are killed in a police operation in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
- Javier Milei's La Libertad Avanza wins the most seats in the Argentine legislative election.
- In the Sudanese civil war, at least 2,500 people are killed in massacres after Al-Fashir is captured by the Rapid Support Forces.
On this day
November 3: Constitution Day in the Dominican Republic (2025); Culture Day in Japan
- 1534 – The Parliament of England passed the first Act of Supremacy, making King Henry VIII head of the Church of England, supplanting the pope and the Catholic Church.
- 1805 – War of the Third Coalition: The Treaty of Potsdam was signed compelling Prussia to join the coalition if it failed to negotiate peace between Russia and France.
- 1848 – A new constitution drafted by Johan Rudolph Thorbecke was proclaimed, limiting the powers of the Dutch monarchy.
- 1935 – Almost 98 percent of reported votes in a Greek referendum supported the restoration of George II (pictured) as King of the Hellenes.
- 1956 – Suez Crisis: During an invasion of the Gaza Strip, Israeli soldiers shot and killed hundreds of Palestinian refugees and local inhabitants in Khan Yunis.
- Petronilla de Meath (d. 1324)
- Rosalie Edge (d. 1900)
- Karel Zeman (b. 1910)
- Dawn Marie Psaltis (b. 1970)
From today's featured list
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A series of avisos were acquired by the German navies, beginning with the Prussian Navy in the 1840s, for use in a variety of roles, including as scouts, flagships for gunboat flotillas, and dispatch vessels. The first German aviso, SMS Preussischer Adler, was a packet steamer requisitioned for service during the First Schleswig War in 1848, though she returned to civilian duty after the war. Many of the vessels served as yachts for the royal and later imperial family. At the start of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, the Prussians purchased Falke and requisitioned Pommerania. Grille engaged French forces in the Baltic during the war, but the rest of the fleet's avisos saw little activity in the conflict. The 1880s saw a significant aviso construction program that included two Blitz-class avisos, Greif, two Wacht-class avisos, and two Meteor-class avisos (three vessels pictured). (Full list...)
Today's featured picture
"Dewey Defeats Truman" was an erroneous banner headline on the front page of the earliest edition of the Chicago Daily Tribune on November 3, 1948, the day after incumbent U.S. president Harry S. Truman won an upset victory over his opponent, Governor Thomas E. Dewey of New York, in the 1948 presidential election. The Chicago Daily Tribune, which had once referred to Democratic candidate Truman as a "nincompoop", was a famously Republican-leaning paper. For about a year before the 1948 election, the printers who operated the linotype machines at the Tribune and other Chicago papers had been on strike in protest of the Taft–Hartley Act. Around the same time, the Tribune had switched to a method by which copy was composed on typewriters, photographed, then engraved onto printing plates. This required the paper to go to press several hours earlier than had been usual. On November 4, as Truman passed through St. Louis Union Station in Missouri on the way to Washington, he stepped onto the rear platform of his train car, the Ferdinand Magellan, and was handed a copy of the erroneous Tribune edition of November 3. Happy to exult in the paper's error, he held it up for the photographers gathered at the station, as seen in this press photograph. Truman reportedly smiled and said, "That ain't the way I heard it!"
Photograph credit: Byron H. Rollins
