Clarence 13X (1928–1969) was the American founder of the Five-Percent Nation, a group that split from the Nation of Islam (NOI). After army service during the Korean War, he served in the NOI as a security officer, martial arts instructor, and student minister before founding the new group in 1963. Believing that God could be found within every black man, he took the name Allah. He and a few assistants retained some NOI teachings but with novel interpretations, and rejected dress codes or strict behavioral guidelines—he allowed the consumption of alcohol, and at times, the use of illegal drugs. Clarence 13X was shot by an unknown assailant in 1964 but survived the attack. After an incident several months later in which he and several of his followers vandalized stores and fought with police, he was arrested and placed in psychiatric care; doctors said that he suffered from paranoid schizophrenia because he referred to himself as Allah. He was released from custody after a 1966 ruling by the Supreme Court placed limits on confinement without trial. Although he initially taught his followers to hate white people, he eventually began to cooperate with white city leaders. He was fatally shot in June 1969 by an unknown assailant. He has been held in high regard by Five Percenters, who celebrate his birthday as a holiday. ( Full article...)

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From Wikipedia's new and recently improved content:

• ... that the mountain trogon (male pictured) either excavates its own cavity nest by chewing into rotting wood or uses a pre-existing hole?
• ... that novelist George R. R. Martin singled out Tyrion Lannister as his favorite character in his A Song of Ice and Fire series?
• ... that the Khalidi family opened Palestine's first public library in a Mamluk-era building in the Old City of Jerusalem?
• ... that the first scene in Three Weeks With Lady X is an homage to Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice?
• ... that Polish painter Bronisława Janowska rejected a marriage proposal from the man she loved because he was divorced?
• ... that the groundnut rosette virus, which causes serious damage to peanut crops in Africa, is spread by the groundnut aphid?
• ... that Alfred Hitchcock was an advisor on the official British documentary German Concentration Camps Factual Survey?
• ... that the Privy Garden of the Palace of Whitehall had a screen installed to ensure that passersby would not see the King of England in his bathtub?

• Prokopis Pavlopoulos (pictured) is elected President of Greece.
• Limpet teeth are found to have the highest tensile strength among biomaterials, outperforming spider silk.
• At least sixteen people are killed in a stampede at a Mardi Gras parade in Port-au-Prince, Haiti.
• Egypt strikes ISIS targets in Libya after a video is released showing the beheading of twenty-one Egyptian Copts.
• Taxi, by Iranian director Jafar Panahi, wins the Golden Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival.
• The attempted rape and subsequent murder of a student on a bus spark protests across Turkey.
• Two people are killed in shootings at a free-speech seminar and at a synagogue service in Copenhagen.

Ongoing: Boko Haram – Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant – War in Ukraine
Recent deaths: D. Ramanaidu – Philip Levine – Louis Jourdan

February 22: Feast of Cathedra Petri (Catholicism)

• 1316 – The forces of the infante Ferdinand of Majorca fought against those loyal to Princess Matilda of Hainaut in the Battle of Picotin on the Peloponnese peninsula in Greece.
• 1876 – Swedish woman Karolina Olsson went to sleep and purportedly fell into a state of hibernation for the next 32 years.
• 1909 – The sixteen United States Navy battleships of the Great White Fleet, led by Connecticut (pictured), completed a circumnavigation of the globe.
• 1995 – The photos taken by the Corona spy satellite program were declassified under an executive order signed by U.S. President Bill Clinton.
• 2012 – A train failed to apply its brakes and crashed through a buffer stop at Once Station in Buenos Aires, resulting in 51 deaths and more than 700 injuries.

More anniversaries: February 21 – February 22 – February 23

The Sella Pass is a high mountain pass in Italy which connects the Val Gardena in South Tyrol and Canazei in the Fassa Valley in Trentino. Lying 2,244 metres (7,362 ft) above sea level, together with Pordoi Pass, Gardena Pass, and Campolongo Pass, it forms a quadrangle around the Sella group. Photograph: Dmitry A. Mottl Recently featured: Panamanian golden frog – The Skater – R. V. C. Bodley Archive – More featured pictures...