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Fatima Whitbread (born 1961) is a retired British javelin thrower. She broke the women's javelin throw world record with a throw of 77.44 metres (254 ft 3⁄4 in) at the 1986 European Athletics Championships in Stuttgart, and also won the European title that year. She took the gold medal at the 1987 World Championships in Athletics and is a two-time Olympic medallist, winning bronze at the 1984 games and silver at the 1988 games. She was voted BBC Sports Personality of the Year in 1987. During her career, she had a well-publicised rivalry with another British javelin athlete, Tessa Sanderson. Her later career was affected by a persistent shoulder injury, and in 1992 she retired from competition. She has since appeared on several television programmes, including I'm a Celebrity ... Get Me Out of Here! in 2011. Whitbread was named the Sports Writers' Association Sportswoman of the Year in 1986 and 1987. She was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire for services to athletics. (Full article...)

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Did you know ...

Grotto of Our Lady of Lourdes, Notre Dame

... that the Grotto of Our Lady of Lourdes at the University of Notre Dame (pictured) contains two stones originally from the grotto at which Our Lady of Lourdes is said to have appeared to Saint Bernadette?
... that the "You've Got Mail" voice actor was one of dozens of people fired from an Ohio TV station after its takeover by Paxson Communications?
... that Paul Freeman became one of the few Westerners interred at the Kremlin Wall Necropolis, following his death in an experimental propeller-driven Soviet railcar?
... that Lewis Fry Richardson's Statistics of Deadly Quarrels suggested that the establishment of a world government might end wars?
... that a bloodied fingerprint on newspaper was the central piece of evidence in the murder of Vivianne Ruiz?
... that Sylvia Plath criticized her own award-winning poem for its "old crystal-brittle and sugar-faceted voice"?
... that Edward A. Hanna wanted to eliminate the New York State Assembly while he served in it, and later wanted to close down the government of the city of Utica while he was its mayor?
... that Pulaski's Masterpiece, billed as the "world's most valuable dog", disappeared without a trace in 1953?

In the news

Earthquake damage in Diyarbakır

An earthquake (damage pictured) strikes Turkey and Syria, killing over 29,000 people and injuring more than 87,000 others.
Former Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf dies at the age of 79.
A Chinese balloon suspected of surveillance and espionage is shot down after overflying Canada and the United States.
Comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF) makes its closest approach to the Earth.
A suicide bombing in a mosque in Peshawar, Pakistan, kills 100 people and injures more than 220 others.

On this day

February 11: National Foundation Day in Japan (660 BC)

"Le beau vingt-et-unième"
from La fille du régiment

1584 – Spanish explorer Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa founded the town of Nombre de Jesús, the first of two short-lived colonies at the Strait of Magellan.
1823 – Around 110 boys were killed in a human crush at the Convent of the Minori Osservanti in Valletta on the last day of the Maltese Carnival.
1840 – La fille du régiment (audio featured), an opéra comique by Gaetano Donizetti, premiered in Paris to highly negative reviews but later became a success.
1919 – Friedrich Ebert was elected the provisional president of Germany by the Weimar National Assembly.
2008 – Rebel East Timorese soldiers invaded the homes of President José Ramos-Horta and Prime Minister Xanana Gusmão, seriously wounding the former.

René Descartes (d. 1650)
Elizabeth Siddal (d. 1862)
Whitney Houston (d. 2012)

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Today's featured picture

Kremenets is a city in the Ternopil Oblast of western Ukraine. It is the administrative center of the Kremenets Raion, and lies to the north-east of Pochayiv Monastery. The city is situated in the historic region of Volhynia and features the 12th-century Kremenets Castle. During the Mongol invasion of Kievan Rus' in 1240 and 1241, Kremenets was one of few cities that Batu Khan failed to capture. This photograph depicts the former buildings of the Krzemieniec Lyceum, as seen from Castle Hill.

Photograph credit: Konstantin Brizhnichenko

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