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Walker's Court, Soho

James Humphreys (1930–2003) was an English businessman and criminal who owned a chain of adult book shops and strip clubs in London in the 1960s and 1970s. In March 1958 he was sentenced to six years' imprisonment after using explosives to open a safe and steal £8,260 in money and postal orders. On his release he opened a strip club in Soho (pictured in 2008), the centre of London's sex industry. When Humphreys expanded his business and opened sex shops and book shops selling obscene material, he could only operate by paying large bribes to policemen, particularly those from the Obscene Publications Branch of the Metropolitan Police. In the late 1970s his diaries detailing his meetings with police officers and the bribes he paid were used as evidence against twelve policemen imprisoned for corruption. The character Benny Barrett, played by Malcolm McDowell in the 1996 BBC television series Our Friends in the North, was based on Humphreys. (Full article...)

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Benjamin Britten

... that Benjamin Britten (pictured) composed Children's Crusade, with text by Bertolt Brecht, as a piece to be performed by children about a group of children in wartime Poland?
... that although the suffix automaton, a data structure used in computer science, was introduced in 1983, it appeared in a 1973 scholarly article as an auxiliary structure?
... that when he is sworn in next year, Mark Robinson will become the first Black lieutenant governor of North Carolina?
... that the Gulmarg Wildlife Sanctuary acts as a natural corridor in the movement of the Himalayan brown bear and markhor between Poonch and the Kashmir Valley forests?
... that the architect who was hired to remodel 5 Columbus Circle's lower stories later expressed regret for the renovation?
... that Rui Pinto uncovered four terabytes of confidential information about association football finances despite having no formal education in computer science?
... that the development of the video game Serious Sam VR: The Last Hope was affected by two developers suffering injuries during a football match?
... that Victor Jory's first major screen role as a lecherous landlord in the 1933 film Sailor's Luck was praised as "deliciously slimy" and "insanely funny"?

In the news

COVID-19 pandemic: Disease; Virus; By location; Impact; Portal

Arecibo Observatory

The National Science Foundation announces the decommissioning of the Arecibo Observatory radio telescope (pictured) in Puerto Rico.
Hurricane Iota makes landfall in Nicaragua, killing at least 54 people and leaving more than 41 others missing in Central and South America.
SpaceX Crew-1, with astronauts Michael Hopkins, Victor Glover, Soichi Noguchi, and Shannon Walker, docks with the International Space Station.
Maia Sandu is elected the first female President of Moldova.

On this day

November 22: Alphabet Day in Albania, Kosovo and North Macedonia (1908)

Mike Tyson

1718 – The pirate Blackbeard was killed in battle by a boarding party of British sailors off the coast of North Carolina.
1873 – The French steamship Ville du Havre collided with a Scottish iron clipper in the North Atlantic and sank with the loss of 226 lives.
1986 – Mike Tyson (pictured) defeated Trevor Berbick to win the World Boxing Council title, becoming the youngest heavyweight champion in history.
1995 – Toy Story, the first feature film created using only computer-generated imagery, was released in theaters in the United States.

As-Salih Ayyub (d. 1249)
Katherine Plunket (b. 1820)
Asima Chatterjee (d. 2006)

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Today's featured picture

La forza del destino (The Power of Fate or The Force of Destiny) is an Italian opera by Giuseppe Verdi. The libretto was written by Francesco Maria Piave and is based on a Spanish drama, Don Álvaro o la fuerza del sino by Ángel de Saavedra, 3rd Duke of Rivas. The complex plot revolves around whether it is possible for the protagonists to escape their destiny, and the opera concludes with most of the main characters dead. In this poster, illustrated by Charles Lecocq, Leonora has just been fatally stabbed by her brother, Carlos, to whom she had run after he was mortally injured in a duel with Alvaro, the suitor from whom she had become separated after they had eloped together.

Poster credit: Charles Lecocq; restored by Adam Cuerden

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