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Shovel Knight Showdown is a 2019 fighting video game developed and published by Yacht Club Games. It is an add-on to the platform game Shovel Knight. Players battle using one fighter among twenty characters, each with various movesets and fighting styles. Modes include "Treasure Clash", to collect the most gems, and a "free for all" battle to death. In story mode, a single player battles against AI-controlled opponents across several stages before facing a boss. Completing this mode with each fighter allows the player to unlock new stages and characters. Yacht Club Games envisioned Showdown as a small minigame similar to modes in Mega Man 7 (1995) and Super Mario Bros. 3 (1988). The developers gradually built a more expansive title which they compared to a party game. Showdown was released for Windows, macOS, Linux, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, and Wii U on December 10, 2019. It received average reviews on release, with praise towards its characters and multiplayer gameplay, but many reviewers criticized the single-player mode for its difficulty balancing. (Full article...)

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Head of the God of Amiens

... that the God of Amiens (head pictured) seems to have lost his serpent?
... that Bob Hobman recreated a possible sea journey by Palaeolithic humans after 130,000-year-old tools were found on the island of Crete?
... that Aucklanders have a reputation for making false earthquake reports on New Zealand's earthquake monitoring website GeoNet?
... that in his first electoral victory, Aaron Kennedy defeated the premier of New Brunswick?
... that "Vanishing" is the first song that Mariah Carey produced by herself?
... that Kenneth Creer supported applying cosmology to geological problems?
... that during World War II, Soviet atrocities against prisoners of war included the murder of tens of thousands of Polish soldiers in the Katyn massacre?
... that basketball player Charel Allen was a five-time Bulgarian Cup champion despite knowing only a few words of Bulgarian?
... that coconut cups were believed to have medical benefits?

In the news

Bashar al-Assad

Syrian rebel forces capture Damascus following multiple offensives as overthrown president Bashar al-Assad (pictured) flees to Russia.
Notre-Dame de Paris reopens following reconstruction after the 2019 fire.
The first round of the Romanian presidential election is annulled by the Constitutional Court following allegations of Russian electoral interference.
The French government, led by Michel Barnier, collapses following a vote of no confidence by the National Assembly.

On this day

December 10: Human Rights Day; Nobel Banquet in Stockholm, Sweden

Raúl Alfonsín

1508 – The Papal States, France, Aragon and the Holy Roman Empire formed the League of Cambrai, an alliance against the Republic of Venice.
1848 – Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte won France's first presidential election, and was elected as the first and only president of the French Second Republic.
1901 – On the fifth anniversary of the death of their founder, Swedish chemist and industrialist Alfred Nobel, the first Nobel Prizes were awarded in Stockholm.
1970 – Around the northern Thai village of Mae Salong, remnants of Chinese anti-communist forces now fighting on behalf of the Thai government launched a five-year campaign against local communist insurgents.
1983 – Raúl Alfonsín (pictured) became the first democratically elected president of Argentina to take office after more than seven years of military dictatorship.

Stede Bonnet (d. 1718)
María Bibiana Benítez (b. 1783)
Diane Schuur (b. 1953)
Lalji Singh (d. 2017)

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Today's featured picture

Kitt Peak National Observatory is a United States astronomical observatory located on Kitt Peak in the Quinlan Mountains, 55 miles (88 km) southwest of Tucson, Arizona, in the Sonoran Desert and the Tohono Oʼodham Nation. With more than twenty optical telescopes and two radio telescopes, it is one of the largest gatherings of astronomical instruments in the Northern Hemisphere. The observatory was founded in 1958, and was administered by the National Optical Astronomy Observatory from the early 1980s until 2019, after which it has been overseen by NOIRLab. This photograph, titled A Breeze of Color, shows a portion of Kitt Peak National Observatory at sunset, and was taken as part of a 2022 photographic expedition to all the NOIRLab sites.

Photograph credit: Tomáš Slovinský

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