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From today's featured article

The Four Freedoms is a series of four 1943 oil paintings by the American artist Norman Rockwell (1894–1978). The paintings—Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Worship, Freedom from Want and Freedom from Fear—refer to President Franklin D. Roosevelt's January 1941 Four Freedoms State of the Union address in which he identified essential human rights that should be universally protected, a theme which became part of the charter of the United Nations. The paintings were reproduced in the Saturday Evening Post alongside essays by prominent thinkers of the day. They became the highlight of a year-long touring exhibition to promote the sale of war bonds in support of the American war effort, which raised over $132 million. Rockwell (pictured in his twenties) was the most widely known and popular commercial artist of the mid 20th century, but failed to achieve critical acclaim. The four paintings, which are now in the Norman Rockwell Museum, are his best-known works, but critical review has not been entirely positive. However, Rockwell created a niche in the enduring social fabric with Freedom from Want, emblematic of what is now known as the "Norman Rockwell Thanksgiving". (Full article...)

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From Wikipedia's new and recently improved content:

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In the news

Abdel Fattah el-Sisi is elected President of Egypt.
Ignatius Aphrem II is enthroned as the Syriac Orthodox Patriarch of Antioch.
American author and civil rights activist Maya Angelou dies at the age of 86.
Petro Poroshenko (pictured) is elected President of Ukraine.
In motorsport, Ryan Hunter-Reay wins the Indianapolis 500.
In ice hockey, the World Championship concludes with Russia defeating Finland in the final.
The EU election concludes with the European People's Party group maintaining its plurality of seats in the European Parliament.

Ongoing: Ukrainian unrest – Balkan flooding
Recent deaths: Wojciech Jaruzelski

On this day...

June 1: International Children's Day

1535 – Ottoman–Habsburg wars: The army of Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor conquered Tunis and massacred an estimated 30,000 inhabitants.
1660 – Mary Dyer was hanged in Boston for repeatedly defying a law banning Quakers from the Massachusetts Bay Colony.
1879 – Louis Napoleon (pictured) was killed in action during the Anglo-Zulu War, sending shock waves throughout Europe, as he was the last serious hope for the restoration of the Bonapartes to the French throne.
1967 – Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, the celebrated album by the Beatles, was released.
1980 – CNN was launched as the first television network to provide 24-hour television news coverage.

More anniversaries: May 31 – June 1 – June 2

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Today's featured picture

The Tower of Babel, held at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, is a painting by Pieter Bruegel the Elder that was completed circa 1563. It depicts the construction of the Tower of Babel, which according to the Book of Genesis in the Bible, was a tower built by a unified, monolingual humanity as a mark of their achievement and to prevent them from scattering. Bruegel completed a second painting of the same subject, known as the The "Little" Tower of Babel, at roughly the same time; it is held in the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam.

Painting: Pieter Bruegel the Elder

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