From today's featured articleOdaenathus (c. 220 – 267) was the founder of the Palmyrene Kingdom. Born into an aristocratic family of Palmyra, Syria, he became the lord of the city in the 240s. By 258, he was a consularis, a position of high status in the Roman Empire. In 260 the Roman emperor Valerian was captured by the Sassanian emperor Shapur I, leaving the eastern Roman provinces at the mercy of the Persians. Odaenathus fought the Persians, reclaiming the entirety of the Roman lands they occupied. By 263, following a successful campaign in which he besieged their capital Ctesiphon, Odaenathus took the title traditionally held by Persian emperors, King of Kings, and gained effective control of the Levant, Roman Mesopotamia and Anatolia's eastern region. He was assassinated in 267 during or immediately after a campaign in Anatolia. He was succeeded by his son Vaballathus under the regency of his widow Zenobia, who used the power base established by Odaenathus to forge the Palmyrene Empire in 270. (Full article...)
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On this dayNovember 19: International Men's Day; World Toilet Day; Liberation Day in Mali (1968)
Jean-Antoine Nollet (b. 1700) · James Ensor (d. 1949) · Tove Styrke (b. 1992)
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A compass rose, sometimes called a windrose or rose of the winds, is a figure on a compass, map, nautical chart, or monument used to display the orientation of the cardinal directions (north, east, south, and west) and their intermediate points. It is also the term for the graduated markings found on the traditional magnetic compass. Today, a form of compass rose is found on, or featured in, almost all navigation systems, including nautical charts, non-directional beacons, VHF omnidirectional range systems, GPS, and similar equipment. This picture is an illustration of a compass rose, copied from a 1492 portolan chart by Portuguese navigator and cartographer Jorge de Aguiar, now in the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library. Illustration credit: Joaquim Alves Gaspar, after Jorge de Aguiar
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