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Pinnipeds, including true seals, walruses and sea lions and fur seals, are a widely distributed and diverse clade of semiaquatic, mostly marine mammals of the order Carnivora. There are 34 living species. They have streamlined bodies and four limbs that have evolved into flippers. Males typically mate with more than one female, and the females raise the pups, often born in the spring and summer months. Pinnipeds generally prefer colder waters and spend most of their time in the water, but come ashore to mate, give birth, molt or escape from predators such as sharks and orcas. Humans have hunted seals since at least the Stone Age, and commercial sealing had a devastating effect on some species from the introduction of firearms through the 1960s. Populations have also been reduced or displaced by accidental trapping and marine pollution. All pinniped species are now afforded some protections under international law. (Full article...)

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Did you know ...

Portrait of a woman from the Myanmar Photo Archive

... that the Myanmar Photo Archive (example photograph shown) revealed "a side of modern Myanmar that, until very recently, remained hidden in dusty attics"?
... that jazz singer Judi Singh's mother and father were, respectively, among the earliest Black and Sikh settlers of Alberta, Canada?
... that the Elmwood Tower may have once been the tallest building in Omaha?
... that R. Ames Montgomery resigned as president of Centre College after students petitioned to remove him for de-emphasizing football?
... that Britney Spears's 2011 song "Selfish" reached number one on the iTunes chart in 2024?
... that despite a career writing queer literature, Chen Xue's 2019 novel Fatherless City had a "putatively straight premise"?
... that singer-songwriter Madi Diaz released her sixth studio album, Weird Faith, after touring with Harry Styles?
... that Kate Gleason would wear her most feminine attire available as a strategy to sell bevel gears?
... that Alan Wace recruited Walter Abel Heurtley, a former military prison governor, to help manage the students of the British School at Athens?

In the news

Crocus City Hall in 2013

A mass shooting and explosions kill more than 40 people at the Crocus City Hall (pictured) in Krasnogorsk, Russia.
Vladimir Putin is announced as the winner of the Russian presidential election, securing a fifth term.
In Portugal, the Democratic Alliance wins the most seats in a snap legislative election.
At the Academy Awards, Oppenheimer wins seven awards, including Best Picture.

On this day

March 22: World Water Day

Charilaos Vasilakos (center) training for the marathon

106 – The Bostran era, the official era of the Roman province of Arabia Petraea, began.
1638 – Anne Hutchinson was expelled from the Massachusetts Bay Colony for her participation in the Antinomian Controversy.
1896 – Charilaos Vasilakos (pictured) won the first modern marathon in preparation for the inaugural Summer Olympics.
1913 – Phan Xích Long, the self-proclaimed emperor of Vietnam, was arrested for organising a revolt against the colonial rule of French Indochina, which was nevertheless carried out by his supporters the following day.
1984 – Teachers at a preschool in Manhattan Beach, California, were falsely charged with the sexual abuse of schoolchildren, leading to the longest and costliest criminal trial in United States history.
1995 – Russian cosmonaut Valeri Polyakov returned from the space station Mir aboard Soyuz TM-20 after 437 days in space, setting a record for the longest spaceflight.

John Kemp (d. 1454)
Yayoi Kusama (b. 1929)
Abolhassan Banisadr (b. 1933)
Rob Ford (d. 2016)

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From today's featured list

Geoff Petrie

From 1970 to 2023, 279 players have been selected by the Portland Trail Blazers, an American professional basketball team in the National Basketball Association (NBA) based in Portland, Oregon. The franchise was founded in the 1970–71 NBA season and made their first draft pick in the 1970 NBA draft. Portland has held the first overall pick four times, selecting LaRue Martin in 1972, Bill Walton in 1974, Mychal Thompson in 1978, and Greg Oden in 2007. Three players drafted by Portland won the Rookie of the Year Award; Geoff Petrie (pictured), who was the franchise's inaugural draft pick, won in 1971, Sidney Wicks in 1972, and Damian Lillard in 2013. Four drafted players have been elected to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame: Walton, Dražen Petrović, Clyde Drexler, and Arvydas Sabonis, while nine have had their jersey number retired by the team. Walton and Drexler were named to the NBA 50th and 75th anniversary teams in 1996 and 2021, respectively, while Lillard was named to the 75th anniversary team. (Full list...)

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Laocoön and His Sons is an ancient sculpture which was excavated in Rome, Italy, in 1506. It depicts the Trojan priest Laocoön and his sons Antiphantes and Thymbraeus being attacked by sea serpents. The figures in the statue are nearly life-sized, with the entire group measuring just over 2 metres (6 ft 7 in) in height. The statue is likely to be the same one that received praise from the Roman writer Pliny the Elder, who attributed the work (then housed in the palace of the emperor Titus) to three Greek sculptors from the island of Rhodes: Agesander, Athenodoros and Polydorus, but he did not mention the work's date or patron. Modern scholars are not certain of the work's origins; it might be an original work or a copy of an earlier bronze sculpture. After its discovery, Laocoön and His Sons was put on public display in the Vatican Museums, where it remains.

Sculpture credit: attributed to Agesander, Athenodoros and Polydorus; photographed by Wilfredo Rodríguez

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