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From today's featured article El Castillo, at Chichen Itza The Maya civilization was an ancient Mesoamerican civilization in an area that encompasses modern-day southeastern Mexico, all of Guatemala and Belize, and the western portions of Honduras and El Salvador. The earliest villages developed before 2000 BC, and the first Maya cities developed around 750 BC; by 500 BC, these cities possessed monumental architecture. Two hundred years later, the Maya were using hieroglyphic writing, the most advanced script in the pre-Columbian Americas. Only three of their books of history and ritual knowledge are known for certain to remain. Beginning in the mid third century, the Classic period saw the Maya civilization develop a large number of city-states linked by a complex trade network. In the 9th century, there was a widespread political collapse in the central Maya region. In the 16th century, the Spanish Empire colonised the region; the last Maya city fell in 1697. The Maya developed highly sophisticated artforms, complex calendars, and mathematics that included one of the earliest instances of the explicit zero in the world. Maya architecture included palaces, pyramid-temples, and ceremonial ballcourts. (Full article...) Recently featured: Mass Effect 2 1804 dollar A Weekend in the City Did you know... Jacob deGrom ... that New York Mets fans mark games started by Jacob deGrom (pictured) with the Twitter hashtag #hairwego? ... that an unusual number of recipients of the Victoria Cross, Britain's highest military honour for gallantry, are buried in Richmond Cemetery? ... that while interviewing for the post of dean of women at Bates College, Judith Magyar Isaacson was asked if she had ever resided in a dormitory and she replied, "Yes, at Auschwitz"? ... that the marbled swamp eel can live out of water for at least six months? ... that brothers Abe Moffat and Alex Moffat were trade unionists and communist activists who became successive presidents of the National Union of Scottish Mineworkers? ... that to promote athletics in India, only Indian nationals are eligible for the prize money in the Kolkata Marathon? ... that pianist Mina Miller founded Music of Remembrance to perform music by and about victims of the Holocaust? ... that Mile Run is almost two miles long?

In the news U.S. winter storm on January 23 A cold wave across East Asia results in at least ninety deaths, primarily in Taiwan. Several countries in the Americas warn women to postpone pregnancy due to a suspected link between Zika virus and microcephaly in newborn babies. A winter storm (satellite image pictured) causes at least forty deaths and paralyzes travel across the Eastern United States. Caltech researchers discover evidence of a hypothetical Planet Nine, about ten times the mass of Earth, in the outer Solar System. Ongoing events: European migrant crisis Recent deaths: Abe Vigoda Marvin Minsky On this day... January 27: International Holocaust Remembrance Day; Holocaust Memorial Day in the United Kingdom and various commemorations of the liberation of Auschwitz (1945) Brisbane River flooded 1142 – Despite having saved the Southern Song dynasty from attempts by the northern Jin dynasty to conquer it, Chinese general Yue Fei was executed by the Song government. 1785 – The University of Georgia in Athens, Georgia, one of the oldest public universities in the United States, was founded. 1868 – Boshin War: The Battle of Toba–Fushimi, where pro-Imperial forces defeated those of the Tokugawa shogunate and which was a catalyst for the Meiji Restoration, began in Fushimi-ku, Kyoto. 1974 – The Brisbane River, which runs through the heart of Brisbane, broke its banks and flooded the surrounding areas (pictured). 1996 – Mahamane Ousmane, the first democratically elected president of Niger, was deposed by Colonel Ibrahim Baré Maïnassara in a military coup d'état. More anniversaries: January 26 January 27 January 28

Today's featured picture During The Holocaust, approximately six million Jews were killed by Adolf Hitler's Nazi regime and its collaborators. Other victims of Nazi crimes included Romanis, ethnic Poles and other Slavs, Soviet POWs, communists, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses and the mentally and physically disabled. This photograph shows fewer than half of the bodies of the several hundred inmates who died of starvation or were shot by the Gestapo in the yard of the Boelcke Barracks, a subcamp of the Mittelbau-Dora Nazi concentration camp located in the south-east of the town of Nordhausen. Numbers at the camp, which was used for sick and dying inmates from January 1945, rose from a few hundred to more than six thousand by the end of the war; up to a hundred inmates died every day. Photograph: James E. Myers Recently featured: Pin-tailed snipe Hidatsa chief Loligo forbesii

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