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From today's featured article

Steve Davis and Dennis Taylor

The 1985 World Snooker Championship final was a snooker match played on the weekend of 27–28 April 1985 at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield, England. It was the final of the 1985 World Snooker Championship between defending world champion Steve Davis and 1979 runner-up Dennis Taylor (both pictured). The best-of-35-frames match was split into four sessions; Taylor was never ahead during the match, but tied at 15–15 and 17–17. The deciding frame culminated with several shots on the final ball – the black – which Taylor potted to win his only world championship. The final climaxed in the early hours of 29 April and was viewed by 18.5 million people in the UK, as of 2020 the record for a post-midnight television audience. The total match time of 14 hours and 50 minutes is the longest recorded for a best-of-35-frames match. The match is one of the most famous snooker matches of all time and part of the reason for the surge in the sport's popularity in the 1980s and 1990s. (Full article...)

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In the news

Chloé Zhao

At the Academy Awards, Nomadland (writer and director Chloé Zhao pictured) wins three awards, including Best Picture.
A fire at a COVID-19 hospital in Baghdad, Iraq, kills at least 82 people.
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The Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment on the Perseverance rover produces oxygen from carbon dioxide in the Martian atmosphere.

On this day

April 27: Koningsdag in the Netherlands

Magellan's death at the Battle of Mactan

395 – Aelia Eudoxia married Byzantine emperor Arcadius without the knowledge or consent of Rufinus, the Praetorian prefect who had intended for his own daughter to wed the emperor.
1521 – Filipino natives led by chieftain Lapulapu killed Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan at the Battle of Mactan (depicted).
1777 – American Revolutionary War: British Army regulars defeated Patriot militias in the Battle of Ridgefield, galvanizing resistance in the Connecticut Colony.
1904 – Chris Watson became the first prime minister of Australia from the Labour Party.

Margaret Macpherson Grant (b. 1834)
Rogers Hornsby (b. 1896)
Vinod Khanna (d. 2017)

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Today's featured picture

Gioachino Rossini (1792–1868) was an Italian composer who gained fame for the 39 operas he composed. This caricature by Charles Motte, captioned La Soirée de Brigton [sic], shows King George IV of the United Kingdom (left) greeting the composer (right) at the Brighton Pavilion in 1823. Having grown used to adulation in the capitals of Europe, Rossini was by then unimpressed by royalty and the aristocracy.

Lithograph credit: Charles Motte; restored by Adam Cuerden

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