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From today's featured article

Oryzomys couesi, Coues's rice rat, is a semiaquatic rodent occurring from southernmost Texas south to northwestern Colombia. It is usually found in wet habitats, such as marshes, but also lives in drier forests and shrublands. It is a medium-sized to large nocturnal rat with coarse fur, usually brownish to reddish above and whitish below, although there is much geographic variation in size, proportions, color, and skull features. An excellent swimmer and diver, it builds nests of vegetation suspended among reeds. Its diet includes seeds and insects. It probably breeds year-round, and females give birth to about four young after a pregnancy of 21 to 28 days. This species may be infected by parasites and hantaviruses. It was first described in 1877, and related forms were eventually merged into a single species. This rat is common, and even locally considered a pest species, but some populations are threatened. (This article is part of a featured topic: Oryzomys.)

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Did you know ...

Portrait of a Carthusian, with a musca depicta

... that many 15th- and 16th-century European paintings included a conspicuous depiction of a common fly (example pictured)?
... that the Sefine Shipyard in Turkey built a hybrid-electric ferry for Norway?
... that in 1345 and 1346 the English repeatedly defeated the French in both north and south-west France?
... that Jo Walton's An Informal History of the Hugos, which opines that the Hugo Award has a 69-percent success rate, was itself nominated for a Hugo?
... that Ham House contains a rare Charles I–era cabinet room, created for the display of miniature paintings?
... that the debate in "Game On" invokes the beer question?
... that the bonfires lit on the night of La Venuta recall the miraculous flight of the Holy House of Nazareth to Loreto?
... that chemist R. Nelson Smith replaced his colleague's desk chair with a porcelain toilet?

In the news

Sir David Amess

British Member of Parliament Sir David Amess (pictured) dies after being stabbed during a constituency meeting.
In cricket, the Indian Premier League concludes with Chennai Super Kings defeating Kolkata Knight Riders in the final in Dubai.
A tower fire in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, kills at least 46 people and injures 41 others.
Five people are killed and three others injured in a bow-and-arrow attack in Kongsberg, Norway.

On this day

October 17

Al Capone

1346 – Hundred Years' War: King David II of Scotland was captured at the Battle of Neville's Cross following his invasion of England under the terms of Scotland's Auld Alliance with France.
1660 – A series of executions of the commissioners who signed the death warrant of Charles I of England concluded; six were hanged, drawn and quartered for treason.
1931 – American gangster Al Capone (pictured) was convicted on five counts of income-tax evasion.
1952 – Indonesian Army elements surrounded the Merdeka Palace, demanding that President Sukarno disband the Provisional People's Representative Council.
2001 – Rehavam Ze'evi, the Israeli minister of tourism, was assassinated in revenge for the killing of PFLP leader Abu Ali Mustafa.

Jupiter Hammon (b. 1711)
Raffaele Bendandi (b. 1893)
Micheline Ostermeyer (d. 2001)

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Today's featured picture

The Old Cathedral, Brescia, or the Duomo Vecchio, is a Catholic church in Brescia, Italy. One of the most important examples of a round church in the Romanesque style, the rustic co-cathedral stands next to the New Cathedral.

Photograph credit: Wolfgang Moroder

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