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From today's featured article

Mandy Rice-Davies

"Well he would, wouldn't he?" is an aphorism that is commonly used as a retort to a self-interested denial. It was said by the model Mandy Rice-Davies (pictured) while giving evidence at the 1963 trial of Stephen Ward, who had been accused of living off money paid to Rice-Davies and her friend Christine Keeler for sex: part of the larger Profumo affair. While being cross-examined Rice-Davies was told that Lord Astor, who owned the Cliveden estate on which Ward rented a cottage, had denied an affair with her; she replied: "Well he would, wouldn't he?" Political, communications and psychological experts have interpreted it as a phrase which indicates the speaker believes a person is making a self-interested, obvious or irrelevant denial. They have also stated it functions as a retort to mistruths made by public figures. Linguistically, it has been noted for its use of the modal verb would to create rhetorical effect. The phrase has been included in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations since 1979. (Full article...)

On this day

June 28: Vidovdan in Serbia

Gavrilo Princip

• 572 – Alboin, the king of the Lombards, was assassinated in Verona in a coup d'état instigated by the Byzantines.
• 1914 – Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg, were assassinated in Sarajevo by Gavrilo Princip (pictured), a Yugoslav nationalist, sparking the outbreak of World War I.
• 1969 – In response to a police raid at the Stonewall Inn in New York City, groups of gay and transgender people began demonstrations, a watershed event for the worldwide gay rights movement.
• 1989 – President Slobodan Milošević gave a speech at Gazimestan in which he described the possibility of "armed battles" in the future of Serbia's national development.

In the news

Plaza Murillo surrounded by soldiers

• In Bolivia, troops led by Juan José Zúñiga storm the presidential palace in an attempted coup (pictured).
• WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is released from prison as part of a U.S. plea bargain.
• Protesters attack the Parliament Buildings in Nairobi, Kenya, leaving 19 people dead and at least 160 others injured.
• A fire at a lithium battery factory in the South Korean city of Hwaseong leaves at least 23 people dead, many of them Chinese migrant workers.

Did you know...

Exterior of the Stonewall Inn

• ... that after the original Stonewall Inn (modern building pictured) closed in 1969, its space was used by a bagel shop, a Chinese restaurant, and a clothing store?
• ... that baseball player Shane Rawley has published a novel?
• ... that the Cat Empire's 2023 album Where the Angels Fall features contributions from 75 musicians and 49 instruments?
• ... that Sara Houcke began performing in circuses at the age of two as a child clown?
• ... that a man was denaturalized and deported from the United States for working at a Nazi death camp, despite the courts never holding that he did it willingly?
• ... that Joy was the sole survivor of the Romanov family's execution?
• ... that Black Sheep Radio dedicated its first day of programming to a fallen pirate?
• ... that The Penguin History of Modern China profiled the Christian General, whose army moved to the beat of "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing"?
• ... that in the Great Alaskan Lumberjack Show, the performers scale a 50-foot (15 m) tree and then free fall?