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From today's featured article

Bottled maple syrup

Maple syrup is a syrup usually made from the xylem sap of sugar maple, red maple or black maple trees. In cold climates, these trees store starch in their trunks and roots before the winter; the starch is then converted to sugar that rises in the sap in the spring. Trees can be tapped by boring holes into their trunks and collecting the sap. This is processed by heating to evaporate some of the water, leaving the concentrated syrup. Maple syrup was first collected and used by the Indigenous people of North America; the practice was adopted by European settlers. Quebec, Canada, is by far the largest producer, making about three-quarters of the world's output. The syrup is graded based on its density and translucency. Maple syrup is often eaten as an accompaniment to food, as an ingredient in baking and as a sweetener and flavouring agent. Maple syrup and the sugar maple tree are symbols of Canada and several US states, in particular Vermont. (Full article...)

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Did you know ...

Women's 400 metres final at the 2016 European Athletics Championships

... that Libania Grenot was the first woman in three decades to successfully defend the European 400-metres title (final pictured)?
... that Captain James Cook and his crew were some of the first Europeans to witness and record Polynesians surfing?
... that Hanahaki disease, a fictional illness in which a person coughs up flowers due to unrequited love, is often used in queer fan fiction to symbolize repressed desire?
... that Carmel Naughton, having been told that girls were "stupid and couldn't do maths", sponsored a STEM scholarship fund?
... that after moving into the Samuel Freeman House, the owners sat on cardboard boxes because they could not afford real furniture?
... that Nicolas Cage was trained by award-winning chef Gabriel Rucker for one of his films?
... that a subcontractor working on the tower of a Nevada TV station recorded footage of the PEPCON disaster as it unfolded nearby?
... that Maude Simmons played the mother of Paul Robeson on stage and the mother of Sidney Poitier on screen?
... that the Japanese government responded to the rice riots of 1918, which involved up to 10 million participants, with a "candy and whip" policy?

In the news

Trifid and Lagoon nebulae

The Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile releases the first light images (example shown) from its new 8.4-metre (28 ft) telescope.
In basketball, the Oklahoma City Thunder defeat the Indiana Pacers to win the NBA Finals.
An attack on a Greek Orthodox church in Damascus, Syria, kills at least 25 people.
The United States conducts military strikes on three nuclear facilities in Iran.
In rugby union, the Crusaders defeat the Chiefs to win the Super Rugby Pacific final.

On this day

July 1: Canada Day (1867)

Sack of Lunenburg

1782 – American Revolutionary War: Five American privateer vessels raided the British settlement at Lunenburg, Nova Scotia (depicted).
1935 – The first Grant Park Music Festival was held in Chicago's Grant Park.
1940 – Second World War: The Grand Quartier Général of the French Army was disbanded, following the French surrender.
1960 – Ghana became a republic, with Kwame Nkrumah as its first president.
1970 – The Belfast Banking Company, which issued banknotes in Northern Ireland, merged with its rival Northern Bank.

Rhoda Delaval (d. 1725)
Plácido Zuloaga (d. 1910)
David Duke (b. 1950)
Pauli Murray (d. 1985)

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Today's featured picture

Trillium erectum, the red trillium, is a species of flowering plant in the family Melanthiaceae. It is a spring ephemeral plant whose life-cycle is synchronized with that of the forests in which it lives. It is native to the eastern United States and eastern Canada from northern Georgia to Quebec and New Brunswick. Like all trilliums, it has a whorl of three bracts (leaves) and a single trimerous flower with three sepals, three petals, two whorls of three stamens each, and three carpels (fused into a single ovary with three stigmas). It is a perennial plant that persists by means of an underground rhizome. Trillium erectum has carrion-scented flowers that produce fetid or putrid odors purported to attract carrion fly and beetle pollinators. This T. erectum flower was photographed in Stephen's Gulch Conservation Area in Ontario, Canada.

Photograph credit: The Cosmonaut

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