Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna of Russia (18 June 1901 – 17 July
1918) was the youngest daughter of Tsar Nicholas II, the last sovereign
of Imperial Russia, and his wife, Tsarina Alexandra Feodorovna. She was
murdered with her family by members of the Cheka, the Bolshevik secret
police. The location of her burial was unknown during the decades of
Communist rule, and rumors that she had escaped circulated after her
death. A mass grave near Yekaterinburg which held the remains of the
Tsar, his wife, and three of their daughters was revealed in 1991, and
the bodies of the remaining daughter and the Tsarevitch Alexei were
discovered in 2007. Forensic analysis and DNA testing have confirmed
that the remains are those of the imperial family, showing that
Anastasia and the other grand duchesses were killed in 1918. Several
women have claimed to be Anastasia, including Anna Anderson, who died in
1984, but DNA testing in 1994 showed that she was not related to the
Romanov family.
Read more:
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Duchess_Anastasia_Nikolaevna_of_Russia>
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Today's selected anniversaries:
1863:
The New Zealand Wars resumed as British forces in New Zealand
led by General Duncan Cameron began their Invasion of the Waikato.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasion_of_the_Waikato>
1918:
RMS Carpathia, which had rescued the survivors of the RMS
Titanic sinking, was itself sunk by a German U-boat with the loss of
five crew.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RMS_Carpathia>
1945:
Winston Churchill, Harry S. Truman, and Joseph Stalin (all
pictured), leaders of the United Kingdom, the United States, and the
Soviet Union respectively, met in Potsdam to decide what should be done
with post-war Germany.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potsdam_Conference>
1998:
A tsunami triggered by an undersea earthquake devastated
several villages in Papua New Guinea, killing more than 2,100 people,
and destroying the homes of thousands more.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1998_Papua_New_Guinea_earthquake>
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Wiktionary's word of the day:
emoji:
A digital graphic icon with a unique code point used to represent a
concept or object, originally used in Japanese text messaging but since
adopted internationally in other contexts such as social media.
<https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/emoji>
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Wikiquote quote of the day:
Today’s press conference in Helsinki was one of the most
disgraceful performances by an American president in memory. The damage
inflicted by President Trump’s naiveté, egotism, false equivalence,
and sympathy for autocrats is difficult to calculate. … President
Trump proved not only unable, but unwilling to stand up to Putin. He and
Putin seemed to be speaking from the same script as the president made a
conscious choice to defend a tyrant against the fair questions of a free
press, and to grant Putin an uncontested platform to spew propaganda and
lies to the world. … No prior president has ever abased himself more
abjectly before a tyrant. Not only did President Trump fail to speak the
truth about an adversary; but speaking for America to the world, our
president failed to defend all that makes us who we are — a republic
of free people dedicated to the cause of liberty at home and abroad.
American presidents must be the champions of that cause if it is to
succeed. Americans are waiting and hoping for President Trump to embrace
that sacred responsibility. One can only hope they are not waiting
totally in vain.
--John McCain
<https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_McCain>
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