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"The Body" is the sixteenth episode of the fifth season of the supernatural drama television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Written and directed by series creator Joss Whedon, it originally aired on The WB Television Network in the United States on February 27, 2001. In the series, Buffy Summers is a teenager chosen by mystical forces and endowed with superhuman powers to defeat vampires, demons, and other evils in the fictional town of Sunnydale. In "The Body", Buffy discovers the body of her mother, who has died of a brain aneurysm. In the series Buffy and her friends deal with death every week, often in gruesome and fantastic ways, but in this episode they are bewildered by the natural death of Buffy's mother and struggle to comprehend what the loss means to them. Buffy must begin to face her life and her duties as the Slayer without parental support and comfort. "The Body" is regarded by many critics as one of the best episodes of the series. (Full article...)

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Did you know ...

Washington Bridge

... that the first vehicle on New York City's Washington Bridge (pictured) crossed it without permission?
... that Dick Callahan received his first opportunity as a PA announcer after claiming that he announced all the games at his high school, even though he had actually never announced a game before?
... that the GPT-2 artificial intelligence can summarize, respond to, generate, and translate text, despite being trained to do nothing more than predict the next word in a sequence?
... that, after former president Abdurrahman Wahid, Rusdy Mastura was the second Indonesian public official to apologize for the mass killings of 1965–66?
... that the 1928 recording by Jimmie Rodgers of "Blue Yodel No. 1 (T for Texas)" influenced a line in Johnny Cash's song "Folsom Prison Blues"?
... that Samuel Pepys wrote of Royal Navy Commissioner Sir Thomas Hervey: "a coxcombe he is and will never be better in the business of the Navy"?
... that by 2001, almost 2000 Trees For Life volunteers were growing 1.5 million plants every year?
... that winners of the Kings Royal at Eldora Speedway, such as Shane Stewart, are given a scepter, robe, and crown, and pose on a throne in victory lane?

In the news

Naomi Osaka and Novak Djokovic

In tennis, Naomi Osaka wins the women's singles and Novak Djokovic wins the men's singles at the Australian Open (both winners pictured).
Porfirije is enthroned as the 46th Patriarch of the Serbian Orthodox Church.
NASA's Perseverance rover, carrying the Ingenuity helicopter, successfully lands on Mars.
A winter storm in North America leaves at least 70 people dead and several million others without electricity or clean water.
Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala is appointed Director-General of the World Trade Organization.

On this day

February 27

Reichstag fire

380 – Christianity became the state religion of the Roman Empire as a consequence of the Edict of Thessalonica.
1776 – American Revolutionary War: A Patriot victory at the Battle of Moore's Creek Bridge resulted in the arrests of 850 Loyalists over the following days.
1933 – The Reichstag building, the seat of the German parliament in Berlin, was set on fire (pictured) in a pivotal event in the establishment of the Nazi regime.
1996 – The multimedia franchise Pokémon was launched with the release of the video games Pocket Monsters: Red and Green.

Ruprecht of the Palatinate (b. 1427)
Mabel Keaton Staupers (b. 1890)
Necmettin Erbakan (d. 2011)

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Today's featured picture

A Negress is an 1884 oil-on-canvas painting by the Polish artist Anna Bilińska-Bohdanowicz, depicting an unknown model. The subject is portrayed from the waist up and dressed in a white robe, but is part naked, with one breast exposed. The Japanese hand fan and the source of light that illuminates the figure and is reflected by highlights in the gold bijoux, create a warm and chamber-like atmosphere. Painted in Paris, the painting was looted during World War II. It was returned to the collection of the National Museum in Warsaw in 2012.

Painting credit: Anna Bilińska-Bohdanowicz

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