On This Day
1240 – Swedish–Novgorodian Wars: A Novgorodian army led by Alexander Nevsky defeats the Swedes in the Battle of the Neva.
The Battle of the Neva (Russian: Невская битва, romanized: Nevskaya bitva; Swedish: slaget vid Neva; Finnish: Nevan taistelu) was fought between the Novgorod Republic, along with Karelians, and the Kingdom of Sweden,[2] including Norwegian, Finnish and Tavastian forces, on the Neva River, near the settlement of Ust-Izhora, on 15 July 1240. The battle is mentioned only in Russian sources,[3] and it remains unclear whether it was a major invasion or a small-scale raid.[4][5] In Russian historiography, it has become an event of massive scale and importance.[6]
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Born On This Day
1359 – Antonio Correr, Italian cardinal (died 1445)
Antonio Correr (15 July 1359 – 19 January 1445) was a Roman Catholic cardinal who was appointed cardinal by his uncle Pope Gregory XII during the period of the Great Western Schism.
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FYI
NASA: Astronomy Picture of the Day
EarthSky News
This Day in Tech History
This Day In History
Interesting Facts
Word Genius: Word of the Day
Wise Trivia
When you’re out there panhandling in the river, occasionally you get a gold nugget.
David Gergen,
US presidential adviser, political commentator, editor, writer
1942-2025
David Richmond Gergen (May 9, 1942 – July 10, 2025) was an American political commentator and longtime presidential adviser who served during the administrations of Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, and Bill Clinton.[2] He was later a senior political analyst for CNN[3] and a professor of public service and the founding director of the Center for Public Leadership at the Harvard Kennedy School. Gergen was also the former editor at large of U.S. News & World Report[4] and a contributor to CNN and Parade Magazine. He was twice a member of election coverage teams that won Peabody awards: in 1988 with MacNeil–Lehrer (now PBS News Hour), and in 2008 with CNN.
By Colin Marshall, Open Culture: The Entire History of English in 22 Minutes
TLDR: Meta’s AI pivot 🤖, ChromeOS Android merger 📱, AWS agentic IDE 👨💻
DataByteGo Newsletter: Stop Wasting Time: Here’s How to Prepare Data for AI the Smart Way
North to the Future: An Offline Adventure through the Changing Wilds of AlaskaBen Weissenbach
Grand Central Publishing, Jul 15, 2025 – Nature – 320 pages
Hailed as a “worthy successor” to John McPhee (Kirkus Reviews), Ben Weissenbach —a digital native with little prior wilderness experience—embarks on a series of scientific adventures across the wilds of Alaska with some of the state’s most distinguished and audacious researchers.
At the age of twenty, college student Ben Weissenbach went north to Arctic Alaska armed with little more than inspiration from his literary heroes and a growing interest in climate change. What met him there was a world utterly unlike the 21st century Los Angeles in which he grew up—a land of ice, rock, and grizzlies seen by few outside a small contingent of scientists with big personalities.
There’s Roman Dial, the larger-than-life ecologist with whom Ben walks and rafts a thousand miles across Alaska’s Brooks Range. There’s Kenji Yoshikawa, the reindeer-herding permafrost expert who leaves Ben alone for eleven days to care for his off-grid homestead, where temperatures drop to -49 degrees Fahrenheit. And there’s Matt Nolan, the independent glaciologist who flies him to the largest glaciers in the American Arctic.
As these scientists teach Ben to read Alaska’s warming landscape, he confronts the limits of digital life and the complexity of the world beyond his screens. He emerges from each adventure with a new perspective on our modern relationship to technology and a growing wonder for our fast-changing—ever-changing—natural world.
By Craig Medred: National decay
Jake Wynn – Public Historian: A speech documents the early history of Williamstown, Pennsylvania | 1876
Jake Wynn – Public Historian: Recollections and reflections on growing up in Williamstown, Pennsylvania | 2025
Workplace Coach Blog: When You Can’t Turn Your Brain Off at Night
NSFW
Joe Rogan Experience #2349 – Danny Jones
Daylight Computer
Recipes
Simply Recipes: Alabama White Sauce Is the Perfect Companion for All Your Grilled Meats
Taste of Home: Garbage Bread
Taste of Home: I Recreated the Disney Blue Ribbon Corn Dogs So You Can Have a Taste of Disney at Home
Simply Recipes: The Creole Spaghetti Recipe I Learned from My Dad
Just the Recipe: Paste the URL to any recipe, click submit, and it’ll return literally JUST the recipe- no ads, no life story of the writer, no nothing EXCEPT the recipe.
DamnDelicious
RecipeTinEats
- Easy Slow Cooker BBQ Shredded Beef June 16, 2026Slow Cooker BBQ Shredded Beef is what you make when you want a big batch of crowd-pleasing food with relatively little effort. The succulent pulled beef is smothered in an incredible homemade barbecue sauce, and there’s so many ways to serve it – pile into sliders, heap onto plates or stuff into baked potatoes! Easy... […]Nagi
- Coffee Cake with Cinnamon Streusel June 12, 2026Firstly, thank you for the Jaffle love. 🥰 Hit the Jaffle button above to see what he got up to today! Secondly – cake. Specifically, Coffee Cake! A classic crumb cake with a jammy cinnamon ribbon, loaded with lots and lots of nubbly, extra crunchy cinnamon streusel. Outrageously good. Coffee Cake with Cinnamon Streusel This... […]Nagi
wikimedia
- Wikimedia Commons picture of the day for June 19 June 19, 2026Picture of the day Alley on Escheckstraße (and part of the cuckoo clock trail), Schönwald im Schwarzwald, Baden-Württemberg, Germany
- Wikimedia Commons picture of the day for June 18 June 18, 2026Picture of the day Red-headed weaver (Anaplectes rubriceps leuconotus) male building nest in the Soysambu Conservancy, Kenya.
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Welcome to the Stump the Bookseller blog!
Stump the Bookseller is a service offered by Loganberry Books to reconnect people to the books they love but can’t quite remember. In brief (for more detailed information see our About page), people can post their memories here, and the hivemind goes to work. After all, the collective mind of bibliophiles, readers, parents and librarians around the world is much better than just a few of us thinking. Together with these wonderful Stumper Magicians, we have a nearly 50% success rate in finding these long lost but treasured books. The more concrete the book description, the better the success rate, of course. It is a labor of love to keep it going, and there is a modest fee. Please see the How To page to find price information and details on how to submit your Book Stumper and payment.
Thanks to everyone involved to keep this forum going: our blogging team, the well-read Stumper Magicians, the many referrals, and of course to everyone who fondly remembers the wonder of books from their childhood and wants to share or revisit that wonder. Isn’t it amazing, the magic of a book?