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From today's featured article

SMS Rheinland was one of four Nassau-class battleships, the first dreadnoughts built for the Imperial German Navy and launched on September 26, 1908. Her service with the High Seas Fleet during World War I included fleet advances into the North Sea, some in support of raids by I Scouting Group as well as the Battle of Jutland, in which Rheinland was engaged by British destroyers. The ship also saw duty in the Baltic Sea during the Battle of the Gulf of Riga. She returned to the Baltic as the core of an expeditionary force to aid the White Finns in the Finnish Civil War in 1918, but ran aground. The damage done by the grounding was too severe and Rheinland was decommissioned to be used as a barracks ship for the remainder of the war. In 1919, following the scuttling of the German fleet at Scapa Flow, Rheinland was ceded to the Allies who, in turn, sold the vessel to ship breakers in the Netherlands to eventually be broken up to scrap metal. (This article is part of a featured topic: Battleships of Germany.)

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Did you know ...

Incan ceremonial vessel

... that 99% of the collection of the National Museum of Ecuador is not on public display (example of the 1% pictured)?
... that Samsul Ashar pawned personal valuables to support his city's football club?
... that the size of the entrance hall at the British legation in Uruguay was increased after a diplomat complained that there was not enough room to hold dances?
... that a former North Korean spy has been unable to return to North Korea since 1953?
... that Christapor Mikaelian was killed by his own explosives, which were intended for the attempted assassination of Sultan Abdul Hamid II?
... that burial vaults at Spring Street Presbyterian Church were forgotten under a parking lot until 2006?
... that one anthropologist has described scenes in the 1893 Wild Australia Show as examples of "settler denialism" and "colonial fantasy"?
... that Marcello Magni voiced more than a dozen characters in the claymation series Pingu?
... that Seven McGee was given his name because he was the youngest of seven children in his family?

In the news

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Saudi Arabia and Pakistan sign an agreement to defend each other against attacks.
American actor and filmmaker Robert Redford dies at the age of 89.
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On this day

September 26

Yves Rossy

1087 – William II, son of William the Conqueror, was crowned king of England.
1907 – The British Colony of New Zealand officially became a dominion to reflect its political independence since the 1850s.
1944 – World War II: The Soviet Army completed the Tallinn offensive, driving German forces out of Estonia.
1983 – The racing yacht Australia II, captained by John Bertrand, won the America's Cup and ended the New York Yacht Club's 132-year defence of the trophy.
2008 – Swiss pilot and inventor Yves Rossy (pictured) flew a wingpack powered by jet engines across the English Channel.

Francis Daniel Pastorius (b. 1651)
Alice Harnoncourt (b. 1930)
Andi Ramang (d. 1987)
Gloria Stuart (d. 2010)

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From today's featured list

Tyla

The South African singer Tyla (pictured) has won 31 industry awards from 105 nominations. She is the recipient of four South African Music Awards, three MTV Europe Music Awards, two BET Awards and two Billboard Music Awards. In 2024, her self-titled debut studio album was released and it debuted at number 24 on the Billboard 200. That same year, Tyla made the Forbes 30 Under 30 list and she was named the youngest African to win a Grammy Award after receiving the inaugural Best African Music Performance for "Water" at the 66th Annual Grammy Awards. She received backlash after winning Best Afrobeats Video at the MTV Video Music Awards, where she identified as an amapiano artist in her acceptance speech. In 2025, Billboard Women in Music honoured her with the Impact award. Tyla hosted the 2025 Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Awards, where she won an accolade for Favorite Global Music Star. (Full list...)

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Today's featured picture

Voss is the seventeenth collection by British fashion designer Alexander McQueen. It had its runway show on 26 September 2000 at the Gatliff Road Warehouse in London, and was created for the Spring/Summer 2001 season of McQueen's eponymous fashion house. The collection draws on imagery of madness and the natural world to explore ideas of bodily perfection, interrogating who and what was beautiful. Voss features a large number of showpiece designs, including dresses made with razor clam shells, an antique Japanese screen, taxidermy hawks, and microscope slides. The collection's palette mainly comprises muted tones; common design flourishes included Orientalist and surrealist elements. This photograph shows the razor clam shell dress at the 2024 Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Photograph credit: Rhododendrites

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