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Ham House is a 17th-century house set in formal gardens on the bank of the River Thames in Ham, London. The original house was completed by 1610 by Thomas Vavasour, an Elizabethan courtier. Built of red brick, it had a traditional Elizabethan era H-plan. The house was later home to Elizabeth Maitland and her husband John, Duke of Lauderdale, when they held important roles at the court of Charles II. They had the house doubled in size and equipped with princely private apartments and accommodation suites for visitors. It was furnished to the highest standards and lavishly decorated. The gardens and grounds were carefully designed. After Elizabeth's death, the property passed down within her family until it was donated to the National Trust in 1948. The house and gardens were later opened to the public. Ham retains many original Jacobean and Caroline features and furnishings, in unusually fine condition. The house is a Grade I listed building and its park and gardens are Grade II* listed. (Full article...)

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Did you know ...

Marian Wright Edelman

... that members of The Links, an elite organization of upper-class Black women, include Betty Shabazz, Marian Wright Edelman (pictured), and Kamala Harris?
... that Guajajara environmental activist and land defender Paulo Paulino Guajajara, who worked to stop the deforestation of the Amazon rainforest, was killed by a group of illegal loggers?
... that Patsy Cline's cover of Willie Nelson's "Crazy" was the all-time most played song in jukeboxes in the United States, 35 years after its release?
... that although it is a bird of prey, the white-fronted falconet is only 14 to 17 cm (5.5 to 6.7 in) long and mainly feeds on insects?
... that Woody from Toy Story was originally written as a ventriloquist's dummy and the main villain of the film?
... that the Turkish Defne Magnanery was established in a farm house donated by the brother of the head silk farmwoman after he watched her silk farming in a British documentary film?
... that when John Emmitt was traveling to the Oregon Territory in 1852 along the Oregon Trail, two of his three children died of cholera and were buried along the route?
... that RNA, DNA, and vitamins B₁ and B₁₂ are all made from AIR?

In the news

Sumatran earthquake damage

At least eleven people are killed in an earthquake (damage pictured) in West Sumatra, Indonesia.
Russia launches an invasion of Ukraine.
The Winter Olympics conclude in Beijing, China.
At least 223 people are killed due to mudslides and floods in Petrópolis, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

On this day

February 28: Shrove Monday (Western Christianity, 2022); Kalevala Day / Finnish Culture Day

Protesters in Taipei before the shooting

1638 – The people of Scotland signed the National Covenant in opposition to proposed reforms to the Church of Scotland by King Charles I.
1897 – Ranavalona III, the last sovereign ruler of the Kingdom of Madagascar, was deposed by French military forces.
1928 – Indian physicist C. V. Raman and his colleagues discovered what is now known as Raman scattering, for which he later became the first Asian to win the Nobel Prize in Physics.
1947 – Nationalist soldiers fired into a crowd of protesters in Taipei (crowd pictured), killing three people and triggering uprisings throughout Taiwan.
1975 – A London Underground train at Moorgate station failed to stop at a terminal platform, crashing and causing the deaths of 43 people.

Cornelius Gemma (b. 1535)
Pierre Fatou (b. 1878)
Yaşar Kemal (d. 2015)

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McNichols Arena

The highest-scoring regular-season game in National Basketball Association (NBA) history is the triple-overtime game between the Detroit Pistons and the Denver Nuggets on December 13, 1983, played at McNichols Arena (pictured) in Denver. The two teams combined to score 370 points, with the Pistons defeating the Nuggets 186–184. An NBA-record four players scored more than 40 points in the game, including the Nuggets' Kiki Vandeweghe with a game-high 51. The highest-scoring regular-season game in regulation was between the Golden State Warriors and the Denver Nuggets on November 2, 1990. In that game, Golden State defeated Denver 162–158. The highest-scoring playoff game is the double-overtime game between the Portland Trail Blazers and the Phoenix Suns on May 11, 1992. The two teams combined to score 304 points, with the Trail Blazers defeating the Suns 153–151. The Suns' Kevin Johnson scored a game-high 35 points, with 12 other players also scoring in double figures. (Full list...)

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Elliot See (July 23, 1927 – February 28, 1966) was an American engineer, United States Naval Aviator, test pilot, and NASA astronaut. Selected as part of NASA Astronaut Group 2 in 1962, See was the prime command pilot for what would have been his first space flight, Gemini 9. He was killed in 1966, along with his Gemini 9 crewmate Charles Bassett, when their jet aircraft crashed at the McDonnell Aircraft plant in St. Louis, where they were about to undergo two weeks of space-rendezvous simulator training. This photograph depicts See participating in water-egress training in 1965 as a backup crew member for Gemini 5.

Photograph credit: NASA

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