Wikipedia:Main Page history/2017 January 21

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From today's featured article

Dinar minted under al-Ikhshid, 944 CE

Muhammad ibn Tughj al-Ikhshid (882–946) was an Abbasid commander who became the ruler of Egypt and parts of Syria from 935 until his death. His Ikhshidid dynasty ruled until the Fatimid conquest of 969. In his turbulent early career, he was imprisoned along with his father Tughj ibn Juff by the Abbasids in 905, participated in the murder of the vizier al-Abbas ibn al-Hasan al-Jarjara'i in 908, and fled Iraq to enter the service of the governor of Egypt, Takin al-Khazari. He became governor himself, and quickly defeated a Fatimid invasion. His reign marks a rare period of peace and good government for early Islamic Egypt. He vied with other regional strongmen for control over Syria, without which Egypt was vulnerable to invasion from the east, but unlike many other Egyptian leaders, he was prepared to bide his time and compromise with his rivals. In 944 he received recognition of his hereditary rule over Egypt, Syria and the Hejaz for thirty years from Caliph al-Muttaqi of Baghdad. Ibn Tughj's son Unujur succeeded him, under the guardianship of the powerful Ethiopian eunuch Abu al-Misk Kafur. (Full article...)

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N. donaldtrumpi

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... that the British scientist John Challens received the American Medal of Freedom for his work on the V-1 flying bomb and the V-2 rocket?
... that "Im April" from Max Reger's Sechs Lieder, Op. 4, has been called "one of Reger's sunniest songs"?
... that George Panila Kamauoha served in the legislatures of three Hawaiian regimes?
... that Pinchinthorpe railway station closed 13 years before the rest of the Middlesbrough and Guisborough Railway fell victim to the Beeching Axe?
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... that after Agnes Fay Morgan conducted a nutritional study with foxes, she presented her data wearing a stole made from the fur of her subjects?

In the news

The Plasco Building

At least twenty firefighters are killed and more than seventy people are injured when Tehran's Plasco Building (pictured) collapses due to a high-rise fire.
Armed forces from countries of the ECOWAS alliance enter the Gambia to intervene in its ongoing constitutional crisis.
Four earthquakes in the Abruzzo region of Italy result in an avalanche, leaving at least four people dead and twenty missing.
A suicide bombing at a military camp near Gao, Mali, kills at least seventy-seven people.
NASA, NOAA and the Met Office announce that anthropogenic climate change caused 2016 to be the warmest year on record.

On this day...

January 21: Flag Day in Quebec

Newt Gingrich

763 – The Abbasid Caliphate crushed the Alid Revolt when one of the rebellion leaders was mortally wounded in battle near Basra in what is now Iraq.
1789 – The Power of Sympathy by William Hill Brown, widely considered to be the first American novel, was published.
1941 – Sparked by the murder of a German officer the previous day in Bucharest, Romania, members of the Iron Guard engaged in a rebellion and pogrom, killing 125 Jews.
1972 – Tripura, part of the former independent Twipra Kingdom, became a full-fledged state in India.
1997 – The U.S. House of Representatives voted 395–28 to reprimand Newt Gingrich (pictured) for ethics violations, making him the first Speaker of the House to be so disciplined.

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Today's featured picture

Bassac Abbey is an 11th-century Catholic abbey in Bassac, Charente, in the Ancient Diocese of Saintes style. It was largely reconstructed under Guillaume de Vibrac, Abbot from 1247 to 1286.

Photograph: JLPC

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