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Edward Drinker Cope (July 28, 1840 – April 12, 1897) was an American zoologist, paleontologist, comparative anatomist, herpetologist, and ichthyologist. Born to a Quaker family, he published his first scientific paper at age 19. He made regular trips to the American West, prospecting in the 1870s and 1880s. A feud between Cope and Othniel Charles Marsh led to an intense fossil-finding competition called the Bone Wars. Cope's financial fortunes soured after failed mining ventures in the 1880s, forcing him to sell much of his fossil collection. His contributions helped to define the field of American paleontology and he wrote more than 1,400 published papers, although rivals debated the accuracy of his rapidly published works. He discovered, described, and named more than 1,000 vertebrate species, including hundreds of fishes and dozens of dinosaurs. His proposal for the origin of mammalian molars is notable among his theoretical contributions. (Full article...)

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Did you know ...

Dutch women's 4 × 400 metres relay team in 2023

... that the Dutch women's 4 × 400 metres relay team (pictured), having never won a medal before, won European titles in 2021, in 2022, in 2023, in 2024, and in 2025?
... that teenage King Baldwin IV of Jerusalem fought one-handed and still went to battle after becoming blind and immobile at 22?
... that 32,000 children auditioned for three main roles in HBO's Harry Potter TV series?
... that Robert Jacomb-Hood defied his father's wishes and became a railway engineer?
... that police investigated the European Australian Movement after it distributed letters carrying a slogan from Nazi Germany?
... that Algerian gymnast Mohamed Lazhari was awarded the Order of the Rising Sun?
... that Felix Frankfurter coined the phrase "burn the house to roast the pig" when writing about literary censorship in Butler v. Michigan?
... that King Combs released a collaborative EP with Kanye West in support of his father, Sean "Diddy" Combs?
... that the video game Baldur's Gate 3 won so many awards that its creators collected them in rotating teams to avoid impacting development?

In the news

Hannah Hampton

In association football, UEFA Women's Euro concludes with England defeating Spain in the final (player of the match Hannah Hampton pictured).
In cycling, Tadej Pogačar wins the Tour de France.
A plane crash in Amur Oblast, Russia, kills 48 people.
Armed clashes erupt on the Cambodia–Thailand border, amid an ongoing conflict.
Ozzy Osbourne, the lead singer of Black Sabbath, dies at the age of 76.

On this day

July 28

Surface weather analysis map

1899 – A Category 1 hurricane (map pictured) made landfall in Azua Province, Dominican Republic, and destroyed three large schooners at Santo Domingo; only one crew member on the three vessels survived.
1915 – U.S. Marines landed at Port-au-Prince to begin a nineteen-year occupation of Haiti.
1940 – At the Salzburg Conference, Adolf Hitler demanded the replacement of much of Slovakia's cabinet.
2005 – Britain's costliest tornado struck Birmingham, injuring 39 people and causing £40 million of damage across the city.
2010 – In the deadliest air accident in Pakistan's history, Airblue Flight 202 crashed into the Margalla Hills north of Islamabad, killing all 152 aboard.

Johann Sebastian Bach (d. 1750)
Maximilien Robespierre (d. 1794)
Clara Ng (b. 1973)
Huma Qureshi (b. 1986)

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From today's featured list

There have been 88 post-credits scenes across 51 properties in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), as of The Fantastic Four: First Steps (2025). Mid-credits and post-credits scenes have been used in various MCU media since the beginning of the franchise with the 2008 film Iron Man. The use of such scenes as a whole has changed movie-goer expectations, and has received both praise and criticism. In some cases, MCU films have multiple mid-credits and post-credits scenes, while some excluded them entirely. In addition to such scenes attached to films, the MCU has had post-credit scenes in some television series, generally after the final episode of the series. (Full list...)

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Today's featured picture

The grey-headed kingfisher (Halcyon leucocephala) is a species of bird in the kingfisher family, Alcedinidae. It is found across large parts of Africa and southern Arabia – from Mauritania through Senegal and the Gambia, east to Ethiopia, Somalia, Yemen, Oman and Saudia Arabia, and south through to South Africa. It is also found in islands off the African coast such as the Cape Verde islands and Zanzibar. The grey-headed kingfisher is around 21 centimetres (8.3 inches) in length, with the two sexes being similar in size and appearance. The adult of the nominate subspecies H. l. leucocephala has a pale grey head, black mantle and back, bright blue rump, wings and tail, and chestnut underparts. The beak is long, red and sharp. Its song features a succession of notes, ascending, descending and then ascending again, becoming increasingly strident, while the warning call is a series of sharp notes. The bird's habitat constists of scrub and woodland and it moves either solitary or in pairs, often near water; however, unlike most kingfishers it is not aquatic. It nests in holes in steep riverbanks and is aggressively protective of its nest by repeated dive-bombing of foraging monitor lizards. This grey-headed kingfisher perching on a twig was photographed in Queen Elizabeth National Park, Uganda.

Photograph credit: Giles Laurent

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