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Today's featured article

Robert F. Kennedy, Marilyn Monroe and John F. Kennedy in 1962

In 1993, about 350 documents were forged by Lawrence X. Cusack III. These papers were supposedly from, or related to, John F. Kennedy. Some of them alleged that Kennedy had a secret first marriage and dealings with organized crime, had bribed FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, and paid hush money to Marilyn Monroe. Cusack, son of a lawyer who had dealings with Monroe's family, claimed to have found the papers in the firm's files. He sold them for between six and seven million dollars. One of the buyers suggested showing them to Seymour Hersh, who was writing The Dark Side of Camelot (1997). Hersh began incorporating them into his book and proposed a television documentary. Checks by the networks uncovered flaws in the forgeries. These included the use of a ZIP Code in a paper dated two years before the ZIP Code was introduced, and the use of typeball that had not yet been invented. Cusack was convicted of fraud, sentenced to nearly ten years in prison and ordered to refund the money to the buyers. (Full article...)

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Selected anniversaries

August 23: Black Ribbon Day

Stalin and Ribbentrop shaking hands after signing the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact

1898 – The Southern Cross Expedition, the first British venture of the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration, departed London.
1914 – In their first major action of the First World War, the British Expeditionary Force engaged German troops in Mons, Belgium.
1939 – Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union signed the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact (pictured), a ten-year mutual non-aggression treaty, which also secretly divided northern and eastern Europe into German and Soviet spheres of influence.
1954 – The Cruise of the Kings, a royal cruise organised by the Queen Consort of Greece, Frederica of Hanover, departed from Marseille, France.
1989 – Singing Revolution: Approximately two million people joined hands to form a human chain spanning 675.5 kilometres (419.7 mi) across the Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian Soviet republics to demonstrate their desire for independence.

Hamilton Disston (b. 1844)
Sarah Yorke Jackson (d. 1887)
Germán Busch (d. 1939)
Mimis Papaioannou (b. 1942)

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In the news

Kasia Niewiadoma

In cycling, Katarzyna Niewiadoma (pictured) wins the Tour de France Femmes.
Doctors strike and protests occur across India after the rape and murder of a female physician in Kolkata.
Paetongtarn Shinawatra becomes Prime Minister of Thailand after Srettha Thavisin is dismissed by the Constitutional Court.
The World Health Organization declares the mpox epidemic to be a global health emergency.

Did you know...

Flag of Togo

... that the five stripes of the flag of Togo (pictured) represent the country's five regions?
... that a commentator said the McLaren MCL60 underwent "one of the most impressive in-season development steps ever seen" in Formula One?
... that Kanaria's song "King" has been characterized as an allegory for the house arrest, trial, and execution of Louis XVI?
... that a schoolteacher tried to make left-footed footballer Norman Hunter play right-footed?
... that the Santos Passos Church in Guimarães, Portugal, was declared a royal chapel by King Luís I in 1878?
... that the United States' largest planned solar project, Mammoth Solar, is named after mastodon fossils rather than its size?
... that a lyric in the song "Hands on Me" is about Meghan Trainor being unable to have sex due to pelvic floor damage?
... that William Hewett was the last-surviving British Army officer to have fought at the Battle of Waterloo?
... that a 1938 Catholic procession featured 80,000 marchers and one blimp?

Today's featured picture

Picture of the day

Portrait of Ambroise Vollard is an 1899 oil-on-canvas portrait by Paul Cézanne of his art dealer Ambroise Vollard. It was bequeathed by Vollard on his death to the Petit Palais in Paris, where it is still housed today. Like many of his portraits, the Portrait of Ambroise Vollard displays the significant role of the subject in Cézanne's life, and specifically, the artist's gratitude for promoting his work and establishing his reputation as an artist.Painting credit: Paul Cézanne

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