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From today's featured article

Coffea arabica, from which Maraba coffee is made

Maraba coffee is grown in Maraba, an area of southern Rwanda. Maraba's coffee plants are the Bourbon variety of Coffea arabica (plant pictured), grown on volcanic soils on high-altitude hills. About 500,000 smallholder farmers grow the coffee plants under the cooperative Abahuzamugambi, founded in 1999; the cooperative has been supported by the National University of Rwanda and the Partnership for Enhancing Agriculture in Rwanda through Linkages. The fruit is handpicked, mostly during the rainy season between March and May, and brought to a washing station in Maraba, where the coffee beans are extracted and dried. At several stages, the beans are sorted according to quality. The beans are sold to various roasting companies, including Union Coffee Roasters of the United Kingdom, who produce a Fairtrade-certified brand, and Community Coffee of the United States. Rwanda Smallholder Specialty Coffee Company buys from Maraba and sells to the domestic market. Maraba coffee is also brewed into a beer. (Full article...)

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Did you know ...

Audu at the march on Versailles

... that the fruit seller Reine Audu (pictured) was jailed after the march on Versailles in 1789 for announcing her intention to "[bring] back the Queen's head on her sword", among other charges?
... that an abandoned château in an advanced state of ruin was saved with €500,000 from a lottery?
... that in 1976, thieves tied up an art collector, stole a painting, and were never caught?
... that mothers believed that taking young children to the grave of the Petite-Émigrée would help them to walk early?
... that a French company revived a favorite perfume of the ancient Roman nobility in 2023?
... that a two-metre-high (6 ft 5 in) wall of dry stone was built in 1721 to stop the advance of the Great Plague of Marseille?
... that Pierre Noël Lecauchois's client was almost burned at the stake because the order to stay her execution was delayed?
... that Good King Henry allegedly said that he wanted every farmer to have a chicken in a pot?
... that the corpse of Pierre-Amable de Soubrany was guillotined?

In the news

Beth Mooney

Thirteen people are killed and twenty-three others are reported missing in a wildfire in Los Gallardos, Spain.
A series of coordinated attacks across Pakistan's Balochistan province leaves at least forty-two people dead.
The IOC provisionally lifts its suspension of the Russian Olympic Committee.
In cricket, the Women's T20 World Cup concludes with Australia defeating England in the final (player of the match Beth Mooney pictured).

On this day

July 14: Bastille Day in France (1789); Festino di Santa Rosalia begins in Palermo, Italy

Seal of Louis VIII of France

1223 – Louis VIII (seal pictured) began his three-year reign as King of France.
1798 – The Sedition Act became law, making it a federal crime to write, publish, or utter false or malicious statements about the U.S. federal government.
1865 – A seven-man mountaineering team made the first ascent of the Matterhorn, marking the end of the golden age of alpinism.
1960 – Northwest Orient Airlines Flight 1-11 ditched off Polillo Island in the Philippines, killing one person and injuring 44 others.
2014 – Lightning strikes started four fires in the Methow Valley in the U.S. state of Washington, collectively known as the Carlton Complex Fire.

Andreas Joseph Hofmann (b. 1752)
Georgiana Hill (b. 1825)
Harry Atwood (d. 1967)
Ivana Trump (d. 2022)

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Today's featured picture

Chandrayaan-3 is India's third lunar mission, part of the Chandrayaan programme developed by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO). The mission's spacecraft consists of Vikram, a lunar lander, and Pragyan, a lunar rover. This photograph shows the LVM3-M4 rocket carrying Chandrayaan-3 lifting off from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota on 14 July 2023. Vikram later made a successful soft landing near the lunar south pole in August 2023, making India the fourth country to achieve a soft landing on the Moon, and the first country to land a lunar spacecraft near the south pole.

Photograph credit: ISRO, edited by UnpetitproleX

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