Wikipedia:Main Page history/2015 February 20

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From today's featured article

USS Constitution is a wooden-hulled, three-masted heavy frigate of the U.S. Navy. Named by President George Washington, she is the world's oldest commissioned naval vessel afloat. Constitution was launched in Boston in 1797 as one of the original six large, heavily armed frigates authorized by the Naval Act of 1794. Her first duties with the newly formed navy were to provide protection for American merchant shipping during the Quasi-War with France and to help defeat the Barbary pirates in the First Barbary War. During the War of 1812 against Great Britain, Constitution captured numerous merchant ships and defeated five British warships; the battle with HMS Guerriere earned her the nickname of "Old Ironsides". The frigate continued to serve as flagship in the Mediterranean and African squadrons. During the American Civil War, she served as a training ship for the U.S. Naval Academy. She carried American artwork and industrial displays to the Paris Exposition of 1878. Constitution was retired from active service in 1881 and designated a museum ship in 1907, and continues to receive visitors year round at the former Charlestown Navy Yard. The ship sailed under her own power in 1997 on the occasion of her 200th birthday, and again on 19 August 2012 to commemorate her victory over Guerriere. (Full article...)

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Did you know...

From Wikipedia's new and recently improved content:

... that the Chitrakoot Falls (pictured) is often called "the Niagara Falls of India" because of its wide spread of water during the monsoon season?
... that Wesley Blake trained in the Funking Conservatory and eventually became its World Champion?
... that the manuscript of Harper Lee's forthcoming novel, Go Set a Watchman—written before To Kill a Mockingbird but featuring its key characters—was lost until rediscovered by her lawyer in 2014?
... that Venezuelan singer Aneeka cites as musical influences American singers Mariah Carey, Whitney Houston and Aretha Franklin?
... that the Dattatreya Upanishad describes the god Dattatreya variously as a child, a demon, crazy, and an ocean of knowledge?
... that the Canadian industrialist Alexander "Boss" Gibson named his company town after his wife and daughter?
... that Manot 1, a skull discovered in the Manot Cave in Israel, provides evidence that modern humans lived side-by-side with Neanderthals?
... that to combat "shuddering fluorescent jelly" on TV, Jonathan Miller launched A Trip to the Moon?

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In the news

Prokopis Pavlopoulos is elected as president of Greece.
Limpet teeth are found to have the highest tensile strength among biomaterials, outperforming spider silk.
At least sixteen people are killed in a stampede at a Mardi Gras parade in Port-au-Prince, Haiti.
Egypt strikes ISIS targets in Libya after a video is released showing the beheading of twenty-one Egyptian Copts.
Taxi, by Iranian director Jafar Panahi (pictured), wins the Golden Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival.
The attempted rape and subsequent murder of a student on a bus spark protests across Turkey.

Ongoing: Boko Haram – Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant – War in Ukraine
Recent deaths: Philip Levine – Louis Jourdan

On this day...

February 20

1685 – French colonists, led by Robert de La Salle, landed at Matagorda Bay in present-day Texas, which later allowed the United States to claim the region as part of the Louisiana Purchase.
1816 – Italian composer Gioachino Rossini's opera buffa The Barber of Seville was hissed by the audience during its debut at the Teatro Argentina in Rome.
1943 – A fissure opened in a cornfield in the Mexican state of Michoacán and turned into the cinder cone volcano Parícutin, growing 424 m (1,391 ft) in eight years.
1965 – NASA's Ranger 8 spacecraft successfully transmitted 7,137 photographs (sample pictured) of the Moon in the final 23 minutes of its mission before crashing into Mare Tranquillitatis.
2010 – Severe flooding and mudslides on the island of Madeira, Portugal, killed 42 people.

More anniversaries: February 19 – February 20 – February 21

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From today's featured list

There are 12 English Heritage properties in the county of Somerset. English Heritage (officially the Historic Buildings and Monuments Commission for England) is an executive non-departmental public body of the Government of the United Kingdom sponsored by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. Its best known role is as the steward of over 400 significant historical and archaeological sites. The English Heritage sites in Somerset range from Neolithic sites such as Stanton Drew stone circles and Stoney Littleton Long Barrow through medieval castles and religious sites such as Farleigh Hungerford Castle (pictured) and Cleeve Abbey to the most recent, Sir Bevil Grenville's Monument, which was erected in 1720. Many of the buildings in Somerset that are English Heritage properties are listed buildings or scheduled monuments; six of the 12 have both designations. (Full list...)

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Today's featured picture

The Skater is an oil painting on canvas completed by the American artist Gilbert Stuart in 1782, while he was living in London. Stuart's first full-length portrait, it depicts a young Scotsman named William Grant, whom the artist painted from memory after the two went skating together on the Serpentine in Hyde Park. The Skater was widely praised after being displayed at the Royal Academy of Arts, and the artist began to receive numerous prominent commissions. Stuart later said that he had been "suddenly lifted into fame by [this] single picture", which is now held by the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.

Painting: Gilbert Stuart

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