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Girl Pat was a small fishing trawler based at the Lincolnshire port of Grimsby that caused a media sensation in 1936 with an adventurous transatlantic voyage using a sixpenny school atlas as its main navigational aid. The escapade ended in Georgetown, British Guiana, with the arrest of the trawler's captain, George "Dod" Orsborne. On 1 April 1936, Orsborne, with a crew of four, took the vessel out on what its owners authorised as a routine North Sea fishing trip. Nothing was heard of them until mid-May, when the owners received invoices relating to repairs and reprovisioning in the Spanish port of Corcubión. Subsequent sightings placed the trawler in the Savage Islands, at Dakar in Senegal, and at Îles du Salut off the coast of French Guiana in South America. After the vessel's capture and detention on 19 June, the crew were hailed as heroes by much of the world's press. Orsborne returned to England and was tried and imprisoned for the theft of the vessel. Years later he made an uncorroborated claim that the Girl Pat voyage had been an undercover mission carried out on behalf of British Naval Intelligence. (Full article...)

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Denny Hamlin

Spotlight wins Best Picture and Mad Max: Fury Road wins six awards at the Academy Awards.
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The Jamaica Labour Party, led by Andrew Holness, wins a narrow majority in the Jamaican general election.
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On this day...

March 1: Independence Day in Bosnia and Herzegovina (1992); Victory at Adwa Day in Ethiopia (1896)

Hoover Dam by Ansel Adams

1476 – War of the Castilian Succession: Although the Battle of Toro was militarily inconclusive, it assured Ferdinand and Isabella the throne of Castile, forming the basis for modern Spain.
1692 – Sarah Good, Sarah Osborne and Tituba were brought before local magistrates in Salem Village, Massachusetts, beginning the Salem witch trials.
1896 – Ethiopia defeated Italy at the Battle of Adwa, ending the First Italo-Ethiopian War.
1936 – Hoover Dam (pictured), on the Colorado River along the Arizona–Nevada border, was completed and turned over to the Federal government of the United States.
1956 – The NATO phonetic alphabet, today the most widely used spelling alphabet, was first implemented by the International Civil Aviation Organization.

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Today's featured picture

The Milkmaid is an oil painting on canvas by the Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer. Thought to have been completed c. 1657–58, it depicts a domestic kitchen maid pouring milk into a squat earthenware container. It is now in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, Netherlands.

Painting: Johannes Vermeer

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