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Menches's application for the post of scribe

Menches was the village scribe of Kerkeosiris in Ptolemaic Egypt. He was appointed scribe sometime before 119 BC, and was responsible for assessing taxes and land on behalf of the pharaoh. Menches was acquitted of attempted murder in 118 BC, after which he requested royal protection from harassment. He continued to serve as scribe until 110 BC, although labor strikes made it difficult for him to perform his duties. Papyri from his office (example pictured) were used to wrap crocodile mummies at a temple in Tebtunis in the 1st century BC. In 1900, English archaeologists Bernard Pyne Grenfell and Arthur Surridge Hunt discovered the papyri at the temple. Known as the "archive of Menches", the papyri are the only known evidence for Menches's life, and are an important source for daily life and government in ancient Egypt. The archive is held at the Bancroft Library of the University of California, Berkeley. (Full article...)

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MV June Aster after the fire

A ferry fire (aftermath pictured) off Coron, Palawan, Philippines, kills at least 76 people.
In Yemen, heavy fighting between the Houthis and the Presidential Leadership Council leaves hundreds of people dead.
American journalist and feminist activist Gloria Steinem dies at the age of 92.
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On this day

September 15: Battle of Britain Day in the United Kingdom (1940)

Signatories of the Abraham Accords

1791 – French playwright Olympe de Gouges published the Declaration of the Rights of Woman and of the Female Citizen, hoping to expose the failures of the French Revolution in the recognition of gender equality.
1821 – The Province of Guatemala proclaimed the independence of Central America from the Spanish Empire.
1944 – World War II: The Greek People's Liberation Army won the Battle of Meligalas and began the execution of many prisoners of war and civilians.
1963 – The 16th Street Baptist Church, an African-American church in Birmingham, Alabama, was bombed by the Ku Klux Klan, killing four girls and injuring at least 14 other people.
2020 – The Abraham Accords were signed in Washington, D.C. (signatories pictured), normalizing relations between Israel and two Arab nations, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain.

Stanisław Poniatowski (b. 1676)
Charles-Amédée Kohler (d. 1874)
Signe Toly Anderson (b. 1941)
Mirosław Hermaszewski (b. 1941)

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Today's featured picture

Sunita Williams (born 1965) is an American former NASA astronaut and retired United States Navy captain. Selected as an astronaut in 1998, she first flew to the International Space Station (ISS) in 2006. Williams returned in 2012 for Expedition 32 and Expedition 33, and commanded the latter. In 2024, she became the first woman to fly on a flight test of an orbital spacecraft, aboard the Boeing Crew Flight Test. Technical problems with this mission stranded Williams and her crewmate Butch Wilmore on the ISS for more than nine months. Williams has completed nine spacewalks totalling 62 hours and 6 minutes, the greatest cumulative spacewalking time by a woman. This official NASA portrait, taken in 2004, shows Williams wearing an Extravehicular Mobility Unit.

Photograph credit: NASA

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