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Confirmation bias is a tendency for people to favor information that confirms their preconceptions. As a result, people recall information from memory selectively, and interpret it in a biased way, in particular for emotionally significant issues and established beliefs. Biased search, interpretation and recall have been invoked to explain attitude polarization (disagreeing parties diverging further when they are exposed to the same evidence), belief perseverance (beliefs persisting after the evidence for them is shown to be false), the primacy effect (data encountered early in a series being given more weight) and illusory correlation (people falsely perceiving an association between two events or situations). Explanations for these biases include wishful thinking and the limited human capacity to process information. Confirmation biases contribute to overconfidence in personal beliefs and can maintain or strengthen beliefs in the face of contrary evidence. This can lead to disastrous decisions, especially in organizational, military and political contexts. ( Full article...)

• ... that New York City's largest office building (pictured) is owned by an Alabama pension fund?
• ... that Victória Pitts from Brazil portrayed characters in all three parts of Puccini's Il trittico at the Oper Frankfurt in 2022, including Zita in Gianni Schicchi?
• ... that Sharp Corporation produced three official variants of Nintendo's Famicom in Japan, one of which was a television set that was subsequently released in the United States?
• ... that the US Special Envoy for Afghan women and girls, Rina Amiri, is a former refugee who told US Senator John Kerry that "the Afghan population is not the Taliban"?
• ... that the main activity of the short-lived parliament of Central Lithuania of 1922 was to request annexation by Poland?
• ... that Emma Reaney is the only Notre Dame Fighting Irish swimmer to win an NCAA championship?
• ... that sales declined after Anyone Here Been Raped and Speaks English? was renamed by its American publisher, so the original title was restored in subsequent editions?
• ... that model Patsy Pulitzer was called one of the "World's Loveliest Sportswomen" after catching a 1,230-pound (560 kg) black marlin, a then world-record fish for a woman?

• William Ruto (pictured) is elected President of Kenya.
• In Giza, Egypt, a church fire spreads to a nursery killing 41 people, including at least 18 children.
• Salman Rushdie, author of The Satanic Verses, is critically injured after a stabbing at a speech in the United States.
• A mass fish kill occurs in the river Oder in Poland and Germany.

August 19

• 1274 – Shortly after his return from the Ninth Crusade, Edward I was crowned King of England at Westminster Abbey, nearly two years after his father's death.
• 1745 – Bonnie Prince Charlie (pictured) raised the Jacobite standard at Glenfinnan, Scotland, in an attempt to regain the British throne for his father, beginning the Jacobite rising of 1745.
• 1759 – Seven Years' War: At the Battle of Lagos, British ships, having damaged several French vessels the previous day, pursued the remainder of the fleet to Lagos, Portugal, and continued the battle there in violation of Portuguese neutrality.
• 2002 – Second Chechen War: A Russian Mil Mi-26 was brought down by Chechen separatists with a man-portable air-defense system near Khankala, killing 127 people in the deadliest helicopter crash in history.
• 2017 – Around 250,000 farmed non-native Atlantic salmon were accidentally released into the wild near Cypress Island, Washington.