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Yuan-era stele in the ruins of the Cross Temple

The Cross Temple is a former place of worship in Fangshan, Beijing. Built as a Buddhist temple, it may have seen Christian use during the Tang dynasty (618–907). The temple was used by Buddhists during the Liao dynasty (916–1125) and by Christians during the Yuan dynasty (1271–1368), returned to Buddhist use during the Ming dynasty (1368–1644), and was sold in 1911. Its first modern mention was in 1919. The Cross Temple was damaged during the Cultural Revolution but recognised as a national-level protected site in 2006. Some scholars consider it to be the only place of worship of the Church of the East (also known as Nestorian Christianity) discovered in China. In the early 20th century, two stone blocks carved with crosses were discovered, one of which had an inscription in Syriac; they are presently on display at Nanjing Museum. Today, the site features two ancient steles (one pictured) dating to the Liao and Yuan dynasties, some groundwork and the bases of several pillars. (Full article...)

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On this day

August 29: Feast of the Beheading of John the Baptist (Catholicism, Anglicanism)

Michael Faraday

1350 – Hundred Years' War: Led by King Edward III, a fleet of 50 English ships captured at least 14 Castilian vessels and sank several more at the Battle of Winchelsea.
1786 – Angered by high tax burdens and disfranchisement, farmers in western Massachusetts led by Daniel Shays began an armed uprising against the U.S. federal government.
1831 – Michael Faraday (pictured) first experimentally demonstrated electromagnetic induction, leading to the formulation of the law of induction named after him.
1960 – Air France Flight 343 crashed while attempting to land at Yoff Airport, Dakar, killing all 63 occupants.
2016 – Chen Quanguo became the Chinese Communist Party secretary of Xinjiang, and in that role later oversaw the creation of the Xinjiang internment camps.

Abu Taghlib (d. 979)
Harriet Leveson-Gower, Countess Granville (b. 1785)
Orval Grove (b. 1919)
Kazi Nazrul Islam (d. 1976)

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Today's featured picture

Tom Taylor (1817–1880) was an English dramatist, public servant and writer. After a brief academic career in English literature and language at University College London in the 1840s, Taylor practised law and became a civil servant. At the same time he became a journalist, most prominently as a contributor to and eventually the editor of the magazine Punch. He also began a theatre career and is now best known as a playwright. With up to one hundred plays staged during his career, both original work and adaptations of French plays, Taylor's output covers a range of genres from farce to melodrama. Most fell into neglect after Taylor's death, but Our American Cousin (1858), which achieved great success in the 19th century, remains famous as the piece that was being performed in the presence of Abraham Lincoln when he was assassinated in 1865. This undated photograph by the studio of Samuel Robert Lock and George C. Whitfield is part of Men of Mark: A Gallery of Contemporary Portraits, a collection published in 1881.

Photograph credit: Lock & Whitfield; restored by Adam Cuerden

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