The red-billed tropicbird is a seabird, one of three species in the family Phaethontidae. Resembling a tern, it has mostly white plumage with some black markings on the wings and back, a black mask and a red bill. Most adults have tail streamers that are about two times their body length, and generally longer in males than in females. Described by Carl Linnaeus in his 10th edition of Systema Naturae (1758), this species ranges across the Indian Ocean, the tropical Atlantic, and the eastern Pacific. Nesting takes place in loose colonies. A single egg is laid, and incubated by both sexes for about six weeks. After a chick fledges, the parents will usually stop visiting the nest and the chick will leave. Red-billed tropicbirds of all ages feed on fish and squid, catching them by diving from the air into the water. The birds sometimes follow surface-feeding predators that drive prey to the surface, where they can be seized. (Full article...)

Bazoline Usher in 1982

• ... that in 1944, educator Bazoline Estelle Usher (pictured) became the first African American to have an office at Atlanta City Hall?
• ... that The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle, a 1991 Newbery Honor book, was written in the style of a 19th-century travelogue?
• ... that Walter Freudenthal distinguished between the skin conditions keratoma senile and verruca senilis, before leaving Nazi-occupied Europe?
• ... that deserters from the South Sudanese army embarked on a long march north, across the border into Sudan, to escape their former comrades?
• ... that singer Elise Barensfeld is a possible dedicatee of Ludwig van Beethoven's Für Elise?
• ... that the cover of Houses of the Holy was designed by Hipgnosis and based on photographs taken at the Giant's Causeway?
• ... that in 1901, Herbert R. Spencer described how to turn a baby should it be in the breech position before birth?
• ... that National Hot Rod Association altereds were notorious for running sideways?

Eliud Kipchoge

• An attack at a military parade kills at least 29 people in Ahvaz, Iran.
• A Tanzanian ferry capsizes on Lake Victoria, killing at least 207 people.
• A landslide, triggered by several days of heavy rainfall, kills at least 29 people in Naga, Philippines.
• Kenyan Eliud Kipchoge (pictured) runs the Berlin Marathon in world record time.
• NASA's ICESat-2 satellite is launched, the last mission to use the Delta II rocket.

September 23: Banned Books Week begins (2018); Celebrate Bisexuality Day; National Day in Saudi Arabia (1932)

Ramón Emeterio Betances

• 1568 – Anglo-Spanish War: At San Juan de Ulúa (in what is now Veracruz, Mexico), Spanish naval forces forced English privateers to halt their illegal trade.
• 1803 – Maratha troops were defeated by British forces at the Battle of Assaye, one of the decisive battles of the Second Anglo-Maratha War.
• 1868 – Ramón Emeterio Betances (pictured) led the Grito de Lares, a revolt against Spanish rule in Puerto Rico.
• 1952 – U.S. vice-presidential candidate Richard Nixon delivered the "Checkers speech", one of the first political uses of television to appeal directly to the populace.
• 2008 – A gunman shot and killed ten students at Seinäjoki University of Applied Sciences in Kauhajoki, Western Finland, before committing suicide.

Eleonora Gonzaga (b. 1598) · Émilie Gamelin (d. 1851) · Sean Spicer (b. 1971)