Wikipedia:Main Page history/2014 November 17

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Not My Life is a 2011 American independent documentary film about human trafficking and contemporary slavery. The film was written, produced, and directed by Robert Bilheimer (pictured in Senegal during filming), who had been asked to make the film by Antonio Maria Costa, executive director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. Not My Life addresses many forms of slavery, including the military use of children in Uganda, involuntary servitude in the United States, forced begging and garbage picking in India, sex trafficking in Europe and Southeast Asia, and other kinds of child abuse. Fifty people are interviewed in the film, including Don Brewster of Agape International Missions, who says that all of the girls they have rescued from child sex tourism in Cambodia identify Americans as the clients who were the most abusive to them. The film was dedicated to Richard Young, its cinematographer and co-director, after he died in December 2010. It had its premiere the following month at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York City. Not My Life was named Best World Documentary at the 2012 Harlem International Film Festival. (Full article...)

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... that when Confucius learned that his disciple Zilu (pictured) had been pickled, he ordered that all the pickle in his house be thrown away?
... that Etal Castle, located near the Anglo-Scottish border, lost its military value after the Union of the Crowns in 1603?
... that stele 14, erected by Yo'nal Ahk III, is considered one of the finest examples of niche stelae?
... that during the Korean War, No. 391 Squadron RAAF ran a "Transit Hotel" that accommodated business people and entertainers, as well as military personnel?
... that Secretary of State-elect of Rhode Island Nellie Gorbea is the first Hispanic to win statewide office in New England?
... that Arvo Pärt began his choral composition Da pacem Domine (Give peace, Lord) two days after the 2004 Madrid train bombings?
... that U.S. Air Force tanker pilots were struck dumb when they radioed in to speak with a United Arab Emirates mission during air refueling and heard a female voice answer?

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Ongoing: Ebola outbreak – Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant
Recent deaths: Alexander Grothendieck

1292 – John Balliol was chosen to be King of Scots over Robert de Brus.
1839 – Giuseppe Verdi's first opera Oberto, Conte di San Bonifacio, was first performed at the Teatro alla Scala in Milan.
1950 – Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama (pictured), was enthroned as Tibet's head of state at the age of fifteen.
1993 – General Sani Abacha ousted Ernest Shonekan to become chairman of the Provisional Ruling Council of Nigeria.
2009 – Administrators at the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia discovered that their servers had been hacked and thousands of emails and files on climate change had been stolen.

More anniversaries: November 16 – November 17 – November 18

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Individual portraits of 53 people central to the history of the United States are depicted on the country's banknotes. There have been no changes in the people depicted on currency intended for the general public since 1928; when Woodrow Wilson was depicted on the 1934 $100,000 gold certificate (portrait pictured), the note was only for internal Treasury and Federal Reserve Bank use. Five people have been depicted on U.S. currency during their lifetime. Abraham Lincoln was portrayed on the 1861 $10 Demand Note; Salmon Chase, Lincoln's Secretary of the Treasury, approved his own portrait for the 1862 $1 Legal Tender Note; Winfield Scott was depicted on Interest Bearing Notes during the early 1860s; and Francis Spinner and Spencer Clark both approved the use of their own image on fractional currency. In 1873, driven in large part by the actions of Spinner and Clark, Congress prohibited the use of portraits of living people on any U.S. banknote. (Full list...)

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The Cassini projection is a map projection first described by César-François Cassini de Thury in 1745. It is the transverse aspect of the equirectangular projection, in that the globe is first rotated so the central meridian becomes the "equator", and then the normal equirectangular projection is applied. The projection is not conformal. Due to the need for conformal projections in national mapping systems, this projection has been mostly superseded by the Transverse Mercator.

Map: Strebe, using Geocart

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