The Kenora Thistles were an ice hockey team founded in 1894 in Kenora, Ontario, Canada. The team competed for Canada's Stanley Cup five times between 1903 and 1907, winning it in January 1907 and defending it once. They lost it in a challenge series two months later, the shortest length of time that any team has possessed the Cup. Nine Thistles players—four of them local to the area—have been inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame, and the Stanley Cup champion team was inducted into the Northwestern Ontario Sports Hall of Fame. The Thistles competed in Manitoba-based leagues throughout their existence, owing to the city's proximity to that province. They joined the Manitoba Hockey Association in 1902, winning the league championship in three of their six seasons. After an economic downturn in 1907, they were unable to sustain their success as professionalism came to ice hockey, and the team disbanded in 1908. (Full article...)

Hoffman's packing puzzle

• ... that it is possible to pack 27 equal cuboids (pictured) into a cube?
• ... that Fred Thomas has been described as "the greatest Canadian athlete you've never heard of"?
• ... that the television series The Bold Type is inspired by the life and career of former Cosmopolitan magazine editor-in-chief Joanna Coles?
• ... that Beethoven's only opera, Fidelio, was a failure in its original form, but was revised partly at the behest of Carl Weinmüller, who then appeared in the premiere in the bass role of Rocco?
• ... that because photomicrographs of Longan witches broom-associated virus were not published, the virus was not initially accepted as the cause of the eponymous disease?
• ... that according to the American Society of Civil Engineers, Thomas Evans Blackwell was the first hydraulic engineer in England?
• ... that in the Newar festival of Depukhu, young men compete for the carcass of a young female goat that is first sacrificed by drowning in the Deopokhari pond in Khokana, Nepal?
• ... that there is a lighthouse under the George Washington Bridge in Fort Washington Park?

Boris Johnson

• The Conservative Party, led by Boris Johnson (pictured), wins a majority of seats in the UK general election.
• In a non-binding referendum, Bougainville votes for independence from Papua New Guinea.
• In New Zealand, the Whakaari/­White Island volcano erupts, leaving at least fourteen people dead, at least two missing, and at least thirty others injured.
• The World Anti-Doping Agency bans Russia from participating in major international sporting events for four years due to doping violations.

December 13

Baker-Berry Library, Dartmouth College

• 1643 – First English Civil War: Roundhead forces serving under Sir William Waller led a successful surprise attack on a winter garrison of Royalist infantry and cavalry.
• 1769 – Dartmouth College (building pictured), in what is now Hanover, New Hampshire, was established by a royal charter, becoming the last university founded in the Thirteen Colonies before the American Revolution.
• 1937 – Second Sino-Japanese War: Japanese forces captured Nanking in China and then began to commit numerous atrocities over the next several weeks.
• 1989 – The Troubles: The Provisional Irish Republican Army engaged in a fierce firefight with the King's Own Scottish Borderers at a vehicle checkpoint complex in County Fermanagh, Northern Ireland.
• 2011 – After murdering a woman at his home, a man threw grenades and fired a rifle at crowds in Liège, Belgium, killing 6 people and injuring 125 others, before committing suicide.

Heinrich Heine (b. 1797) · Taylor Swift (b. 1989) · Jill Craigie (d. 1999)