Wikipedia:Main Page history/2019 May 2

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From today's featured article

The Pyramid of Unas is a smooth-sided pyramid built in the 24th century BC for the Egyptian pharaoh Unas, the ninth and final king of the Fifth Dynasty. Although Unas reigned for around 30 to 33 years, his pyramid is the smallest from the Old Kingdom. It was built between the complexes of Sekhemket and Djoser in North Saqqara. The pyramid's underground chambers remained unexplored until the Egyptologist Gaston Maspero gained entry in 1881. Inside, Pyramid Texts containing 283 spells for the king's afterlife were found incised into the walls of the subterranean chambers; they constitute the oldest and best-preserved corpus of religious writing from the Old Kingdom. Unas's pyramid is the oldest one in which these funerary texts have been found. Unlike the later Coffin Texts and Book of the Dead, the Pyramid Texts were reserved for pharaohs and were not illustrated. Their function was to guide the ruler into eternal life. (Full article...)

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Did you know...

Hermann Herlitz

... that Hermann Herlitz (pictured), born to Jewish parents in Prussia in 1834, was pastor of the Lutheran Trinity Church in East Melbourne, Australia, for 46 years?
... that in UK elections, it is illegal for candidates to treat the voters?
... that Chicago Blackhawks team historian Bob Verdi was named Illinois Sportswriter of the Year 19 times?
... that staghorn hydrocoral grows on a mollusc shell occupied by a hermit crab?
... that six years after Zhang Yiming founded ByteDance, it surpassed Uber to become the most valuable startup company in the world?
... that a newly discovered cave has been temporarily named after a Star Wars character?
... that after a spinal cord injury, Marni Abbott-Peter won three Paralympic gold medals with the Canada women's national wheelchair basketball team?
... that in his book The Unending Game, Indian spymaster Vikram Sood explains that the real world of espionage is less like a James Bond movie and more like a George Smiley novel?

In the news

Pedro Sánchez

In a snap general election, the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (leader Pedro Sánchez pictured) wins the most seats in both houses of the Cortes Generales.
Flooding and winds from Cyclone Kenneth kill at least 45 people, injure more than 200 others, and cause serious damage in Mozambique and the Comoro Islands.
An earthquake in Luzon, the Philippines, kills at least 18 people.
Volodymyr Zelensky wins the Ukrainian presidential election.

On this day

May 2: Yom HaShoah in Israel (2019); Flag Day in Poland; National Day of Prayer in the United States (2019)

Mireya Moscoso

1194 – King Richard I of England gave the city of Portsmouth its first Royal Charter.
1863 – American Civil War: Confederate general Stonewall Jackson was wounded by friendly fire during the Battle of Chancellorsville, leading to his death by pneumonia eight days later.
1953 – Hussein bin Talal was enthroned as King of Jordan.
1999 – Mireya Moscoso (pictured) became the first woman to be elected President of Panama.
2014 – Two mudslides in Badakhshan Province, Afghanistan, killed at least 350 people.

Leonardo da Vinci (d. 1519) · Mary Moser (d. 1819) · Dwayne Johnson (b. 1972)

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Today's featured picture

The Madonna of Loreto is an oil-on-panel painting by the Italian High Renaissance painter Raphael, completed around 1511. The painting shows the Christ Child with his mother, Mary, as well as her husband, Saint Joseph. Just awakened, Jesus is playing a game with his mother's veil. Joseph is shown on the right, looking in from the shadows. Scholars have determined through X-ray analysis that Joseph was added as an afterthought, his image being painted over a window that was previously visible over Mary's shoulder. Furthermore, the change in the position of Jesus's right foot was also revealed via X-ray. These changes align with Raphael's preliminary drawings for the painting. The painting is now in the collection of the Musée Condé in Chantilly, France.

Painting credit: Raphael

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