February 13

Coso artifact

• 1660 – The four-year-old Charles XI became King of Sweden upon his father's death.
• 1891 – Frances Coles was killed in the last of eleven unsolved murders of women that took place in or near the impoverished Whitechapel district in the East End of London.
• 1961 – Geode prospectors near Olancha, California, discovered what they claimed to be a 500,000-year-old rock with a 1920s-era spark plug encased within (pictured).
• 2017 – Kim Jong-nam, the half-brother of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, was assassinated using VX nerve agent in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

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Fatimid gold dinar of al-Mu'izz, Palestine 969/70

• ... that the Fatimid Caliphate used gold from the tombs of the pharaohs in its gold coinage (pictured)?
• ... that Paris was the first county seat of Linn County, Kansas, but hardly a ruin is left to tell where it once was?
• ... that Américo Ramos became Prime Minister of São Tomé and Príncipe after his predecessor, Ilza Amado Vaz, resigned following a tenure of three days?
• ... that a million tulips at the 1939 New York World's Fair were destroyed and replaced the month after the fair began?
• ... that there are more than 100 rock paintings of Aboriginal pictographs on a cliff face in Missinaibi Lake?
• ... that the Deval Mosque was formerly a Hindu temple?
• ... that Andrei Demurenko, the first Russian officer to be a graduate of the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, served alongside the Wagner Group in Ukraine?
• ... that the Stride bus network will launch with electric double-deckers that charge wirelessly?
• ... that a Taiwanese livestreamer accidentally solved a missing persons case?

Gao Qifeng (1889–1933) was a Chinese painter who co-founded the Lingnan School. He spent much of his early life following his older brother Gao Jianfu, learning the techniques of Ju Lian before travelling to Tokyo in 1907 to study Western and Japanese painting. While abroad, Gao joined the revolutionary organization Tongmenghui to challenge the Qing dynasty; after he returned to China, he published the nationalist magazine The True Record. He moved to Guangzhou in 1918, taking teaching positions that culminated with an honorary professorship at Lingnan University in 1925. Falling ill in 1929, Gao left for Ersha Island, where he established the Tianfang Studio. He blended traditional Chinese approaches to painting with Japanese techniques for light and shadow and Western understandings of geometry and perspective. Gao is best recognized for his paintings of animals, particularly eagles, lions, and tigers. (Full article...)