Wikipedia:Main Page history/2014 November 11

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Rowan Atkinson

"Goodbyeee" is the sixth and final episode of the British historical sitcom Blackadder '​s fourth series, entitled Blackadder Goes Forth. First broadcast on BBC One on 2 November 1989, shortly before Armistice Day, the episode depicts its main characters' final hours before a British offensive on the Western Front of the First World War, and the failed attempts of Captain Blackadder, played by Rowan Atkinson (pictured), to escape his fate by feigning madness. After he cannot convince General Melchett, and Field Marshal Haig's advice is useless, he is resigned to take part in the push. It has a darker tone than other episodes in the series, culminating with the main characters charging into no-man's land under machine-gun fire. The episode's theme of death ties in with the series' use of gallows humour and its criticism and satire of war. Richard Curtis and Ben Elton wrote the episode, and additional material was provided by its cast members. Its slow-motion final sequence showing the main characters going "over the top" has often been voted one of the greatest moments in television. (Full article...)

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November 11: Armistice Day in Belgium, France, New Zealand and Serbia; Independence Day in Angola (1975) and Poland (1918); Veterans Day in the United States

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Today's featured picture

Papaver rhoeas

Three stages of a common poppy flower (Papaver rhoeas): bud, flower and fruit (capsule). The species, which grows up to 70 centimetres (28 in) in height, has large showy flowers which measure 50 to 100 millimetres (2 to 4 in). The flower stem is usually covered with coarse hairs that are held at right angles to the surface. The later capsules are hairless, obovoid in shape, and less than twice as tall as they are wide, with a stigma at least as wide as the capsule.

Poppies are soil seed bank plants which germinate when the soil is disturbed. After the extensive ground disturbance caused by the fighting in World War I, poppies bloomed in between the trench lines and no man's lands on the Western Front. They have since become commonly used in western countries on and before Remembrance Day each year, as a symbol of remembrance inspired by John McCrae's poem "In Flanders Fields".

Photograph: Alvesgaspar

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