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From today's featured article

Dave Gallaher (30 October 1873 – 4 October 1917) was a New Zealand rugby union footballer and the captain of the 1905–06 Original All Blacks. They were the first representative New Zealand team to tour the British Isles, winning 34 out of 35 matches on their world tour. With his vice-captain Billy Stead, Gallaher co-wrote the classic rugby text The Complete Rugby Footballer. Retiring as a player after the tour, he took up coaching, and was a selector for both Auckland and New Zealand for most of the following decade. The Originals helped to cement rugby as New Zealand's national sport, but Gallaher's role as wing-forward contributed to decades of strain between the rugby authorities of New Zealand and the Home Nations, and the International Rugby Football Board effectively outlawed the position in 1931. During the First World War, Gallaher was killed at the Battle of Passchendaele in Belgium. He has been inducted into the World Rugby Hall of Fame and New Zealand Sports Hall of Fame. The Gallaher Shield is awarded annually to the winner of Auckland's club championship, and the Dave Gallaher Trophy is contested between the national teams of France and New Zealand. (Full article...)

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• Paul Palaiologos Tagaris
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Did you know...

Ustonson invoice

• ... that Onesimus Ustonson (invoice pictured) supplied fishing tackle to the naturalist Joseph Banks for the second voyage of James Cook?
• ... that the Ethiopian hare is endemic to Africa, and is found in the Afromontane Biozone of Ethiopia and the borders of the Sudanian Savanna Biozone?
• ... that during the Dubin Inquiry, lead counsel Robert P. Armstrong questioned Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson about his anabolic steroid use?
• ... that officers from the Albuquerque Police Department lied to the Albuquerque Journal when providing details regarding the death of Victoria Martens?
• ... that a GRIM test on a sample of published psychology articles revealed that over half contained at least one mathematically impossible result?
• ... that Catie Munnings, winner of the 2016 FIA European Rally Championship Ladies' Trophy, was the first British driver to win a European rally title in 49 years?
• ... that the bazaar fly is a vector for trachoma, the leading global cause of preventable blindness?
• ... that instead of giving the keys to the city to visiting dignitaries, the mayor of Calgary "white hats" them?

In the news

Xi Jinping

• Catalonia issues a unilateral declaration of independence from Spain, whose government imposes direct rule under Article 155 of its constitution.
• President Nursultan Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan announces that the Kazakh language will begin using a Latin script, rather than the current Cyrillic script.
• The High Court of Australia finds that five parliamentarians are ineligible to serve.
• Venezuela's democratic opposition win the Sakharov Prize.
• At the National Congress of the Communist Party of China, Xi Jinping (pictured) assumes his second term as General Secretary, and the political theory Xi Jinping Thought is written into the party's constitution.

Other recent events

Recent deaths:

• Ninian Stephen
• Pinito del Oro
• Fats Domino
• Glenn Barr

On this day...

October 30: Mischief Night in some areas of the United States

Raúl Alfonsín

• 1806 – War of the Fourth Coalition: Believing they were massively outnumbered, the 5,300-man German garrison at Stettin, Prussia (now Szczecin, Poland), surrendered to a much smaller French force without a fight.
• 1888 – King Lobengula of Matabeleland granted the Rudd Concession to agents of Cecil Rhodes, setting in motion the creation of the British South Africa Company.
• 1918 – The Armistice of Mudros was signed in Moudros in the Lesbos Prefecture, Greece, ending the hostilities in the Middle-Eastern theatre of World War I, and paving the way for the occupation of Constantinople and the subsequent partitioning of the Ottoman Empire.
• 1961 – The Soviet hydrogen bomb Tsar Bomba, the largest nuclear weapon ever detonated, was set off over Novaya Zemlya Island in the Arctic Ocean as a test.
• 1983 – As the military dictatorship came to an end, Argentina's first democratic election in a decade resulted in Raúl Alfonsín (pictured) being elected President of Argentina.

Hieronymus van Beverningh (d. 1690) · Adelaide Anne Procter (b. 1825) · Hilja Riipinen (b. 1883)

More anniversaries:

• October 29
• October 30
• October 31

From today's featured list

West Virginia counties

The U.S. state of West Virginia has 55 counties. Fifty of them existed at the time of the Wheeling Convention in 1861, before which West Virginia was part of the Commonwealth of Virginia. The remaining five (Grant, Mineral, Lincoln, Summers and Mingo) were formed within the state after its admission to the United States on June 20, 1863. The West Virginia Constitution was ratified in 1872, replacing the state constitution created in 1863 when West Virginia became a state. Article 9, Section 8, of the West Virginia Constitution permits the creation of additional counties if a majority of citizens in the proposed new county vote for its creation and the new county has a minimum area of 400 square miles (1,036 km²) and a population of at least 6,000. Creation of a new county is prohibited if it would bring another county below these thresholds. Randolph County is the largest by area at 1,040 square miles (2,694 km²), and Hancock County is the smallest at 83 square miles (215 km²). (Full list...)

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Today's featured picture

Doleschallia bisaltide, also known as the leaf wing, is a species of butterfly found in South Asia, Southeast Asia, and Australasia. The butterfly mimics the shape and colour of an autumnal leaf, giving it its common name "autumn leaf". This specimen was photographed in Bali, Indonesia.

Photograph: Charles J. Sharp

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