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The Minute Man is an 1874 sculpture by Daniel Chester French located in Minute Man National Historical Park in Concord, Massachusetts. The statue depicts a minuteman stepping away from his plow to join the patriot forces at the Battle of Concord, with a musket in his hand. Cast from ten bronze cannons, it was unveiled on April 19, 1875, during the centennial celebration of the Battle of Concord. It received critical acclaim and continues to be praised by commentators. The pose resembles that of the Apollo Belvedere and it was assumed that the pose was transposed from this, but modern art historians have shown that the Apollo Belvedere was only one of several statues used in French's research. The statue has been a symbol for the suffragettes, the United States National Guard and the Air National Guard, and has been used on the Lexington–Concord Sesquicentennial half dollar and the Massachusetts state quarter coins. (Full article...)

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Did you know ...

Pierrot and Pierrette by Richard Geiger

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... that in 2014 the European Theatre Convention started a programme known as Dialogue of Cultures to support exchanges with theatres in Ukraine and other Eastern European countries?
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In the news

Russian cruiser Moskva

Russia's Black Sea Fleet flagship, the cruiser Moskva (pictured), sinks after an explosion off the coast of Ukraine.
Flooding across KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, leaves at least 440 people dead.
Shehbaz Sharif is elected as Prime Minister of Pakistan after Imran Khan is removed in a no-confidence motion.
A series of attacks by armed bandits kill more than 150 people in Plateau State, Nigeria.

On this day

April 19: Feast day of Saint Alphege of Canterbury (Catholicism, Anglicanism)

Grace Kelly

1713 – With no living male heirs, Charles VI, Holy Roman Emperor, issued the Pragmatic Sanction, allowing the Habsburg hereditary possessions to be inherited by a daughter.
1775 – The American Revolutionary War began with the Battles of Lexington and Concord in the British colony of Massachusetts.
1903 – Anti-Jewish riots broke out in Kishinev, the capital of Bessarabia Governorate, causing the death of nearly 50 Jews and focusing worldwide attention on the persecution of Jews in Russia.
1956 – American actress Grace Kelly (pictured) became the princess consort of Monaco upon her marriage to Rainier III, Prince of Monaco.
1975 – South Vietnamese forces withdrew from the town of Xuân Lộc in the last major battle of the Vietnam War.

Ernst Rüdin (b. 1874)
Jiroemon Kimura (b. 1897)
Kwon Ki-ok (d. 1988)

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Today's featured picture

Glenn T. Seaborg (April 19, 1912 – February 25, 1999) was an American chemist whose involvement in the synthesis, discovery and investigation of ten transuranium elements earned him a share of the 1951 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. His work in this area also led to his development of the actinide concept and the arrangement of the actinide series in the periodic table. He was the principal or co-discoverer of ten elements, including seaborgium, which was named in his honor while he was still living. This 1950 photograph depicts Seaborg in a laboratory with an elution column used for the ion exchange of actinide elements.

Photograph credit: unknown; restored by Bammesk

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