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Manitoba is aprovince of Canada.Indigenous peoples have inhabited what is now Manitoba for thousands of years. In the early 17th century, English and Frenchfur traders arrived and established settlements in the area. TheKingdom of England secured control of the region in 1673 and createdRupert's Land, which included present-day Manitoba, under the administration of theHudson's Bay Company. Negotiations for the creation of the province of Manitoba commenced in 1869 but disagreements over the right toself-determination led to theRed River Rebellion. The resolution of the conflict and further negotiations led to Manitoba becoming the fifth province to joinCanadian Confederation on 15 July 1870. Manitoba isCanada's fifth-most populous province. It has a widely varied landscape, from Arctictundra and theHudson Bay coastline to denseboreal forest,large freshwater lakes, andprairie grassland.Manitoba's largest city and capital isWinnipeg. (Full article...)

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On this day

July 15:Statehood Day in Ukraine (2022)

SG-1000

1410 – TheKingdom of Poland and theGrand Duchy of Lithuania defeated theTeutonic Knights at theBattle of Grunwald, the decisive engagement of thePolish–Lithuanian–Teutonic War.
1815 – AboardHMS Bellerophon, French emperorNapoleon surrendered toRoyal Navy captainFrederick Lewis Maitland, concluding theNapoleonic Wars.
1983 –Sega's first home video game console, theSG-1000(pictured), was released in Japan.
2009 – AM_w 7.8 earthquakestruck a remote region ofFiordland, New Zealand, the country's largest earthquake magnitude since the1931 Hawke's Bay earthquake.
2018 – CroatianMario Mandžukić scored the firstown goal in a FIFA World Cup final in theirdefeat to France.

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Rosencrantz and Guildenstern is a short play byW. S. Gilbert that parodiesWilliam Shakespeare'sHamlet. The main characters in Gilbert's play areKing Claudius andQueen Gertrude of Denmark, their sonPrince Hamlet, the courtiersRosencrantz and Guildenstern, andOphelia. The play first appeared in the magazineFun in 1874 after having been rejected for production by several theatre companies. Its first professional performances were an 1891 benefit matinée and an 1892 run at theCourt Theatre in London of around 77 performances, withDecima Moore as Ophelia,Brandon Thomas as Claudius, andWeedon Grossmith as Hamlet.Rosencrantz and Guildenstern was revived in London and New York over the next 20 years and occasionally thereafter. A review inThe Times said: "There is more brilliance of merely verbal wit in this little play than in anything else of Mr. Gilbert's. ... It is really a very subtle piece of criticism, sometimes of Shakespeare’s play, sometimes of the commentators, sometimes of the actors who have played the great part." This ink drawing was created by Ralph Cleaver for a 1904 celebrity charity performance ofRosencrantz and Guildenstern at theGarrick Theatre in London. The drawing depicts various characters in the play and identifies the actors who portrayed them, including Gilbert himself as Claudius.

Drawing credit: Ralph Cleaver; restored byAdam Cuerden

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