Wikipedia:Main Page history/2020 July 30

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From today's featured article

The decorated ceilings of the Natural History Museum in South Kensington, London, were designed by the museum's architect Alfred Waterhouse, and were unveiled at the building's opening in 1881. The ceiling of the large Central Hall (pictured) consists of 162 panels, 108 of which depict plants considered significant to the history of the museum, to the British Empire or to the museum's visitors. The remaining 54 are highly stylised decorative botanical paintings. The ceiling of the smaller North Hall consists of 36 panels, 18 of which depict plants growing in the British Isles. Both ceilings make extensive use of gilding for visual effect. Built of lath and plaster to save costs, the ceilings are unusually fragile and require extensive maintenance and restoration. Since 2016 the skeleton of a blue whale has been suspended from the ceiling of the Central Hall. (Full article...)

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Did you know ...

Mud play in a rice field during the 2020 National Paddy Day

... that on National Paddy Day in Nepal, people splash each other and play in the mud (pictured), plant rice seedlings, eat curd and beaten rice, and sing folk songs?
... that during the Congo Crisis, American Methodist bishop Newell Snow Booth was threatened at gunpoint by a soldier before being released by an officer who recognized him?
... that in 1960, British AI researcher Donald Michie made a noughts-and-crosses-playing algorithm out of matchboxes?
... that the English philanthropist Miss James has both a footpath and a footbridge named after her?
... that the old church of St Sebastian in Qormi, Malta, was completed in 1890 but was not formally consecrated until 2019?
... that Ty Dolla Sign's song "Ego Death" is a "first-ever of its kind" 9D listening experience?
... that Ba Than, a school teacher, wrote the Burmese history textbook used in many Burma high schools from the 1930s to 1950s?
... that to demonstrate elevator safety in the Empire Building, eggs and light bulbs were loaded in a cab that was dropped past the third floor at 82 miles per hour (132 km/h), emerging undamaged?

In the news

COVID-19 pandemic

Najib Razak

Former Malaysian prime minister Najib Razak (pictured) is found guilty on all seven charges in the first trial related to the 1MDB scandal.
A series of attacks over disputed farmland in Darfur, Sudan, leaves more than eighty people dead and several villages destroyed.
A security breach in the administration system of Twitter results in many prominent accounts promoting a bitcoin scam.

On this day

July 30: Day of Arafah (Islam, 2020); Tisha B'Av (Judaism, 2020); International Day of Friendship

Brother Jonathan

1676 – Rebelling colonists led by Nathaniel Bacon issued the Declaration of the People against the rule of Governor William Berkeley in Virginia.
1865 – Off the coast of Crescent City, California, the steamship Brother Jonathan (depicted) struck an uncharted rock and sank, killing 225 people; its cargo of gold coins was not retrieved until 1996.
1930 – Uruguay defeated Argentina at Estadio Centenario in Montevideo to win the inaugural FIFA World Cup.
1950 – At the height of the political crisis known as the Royal Question, four workers were shot dead by the Belgian Gendarmerie at a strike in Grâce-Berleur.
2006 – Lebanon War: The Israeli Air Force attacked a three-story building near the Southern Lebanese village of Qana, killing at least 28 civilians, including 16 children.

Jacob Baradaeus (d. 578)
Walter Schuck (b. 1920)
Ian Gow (d. 1990)

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Today's featured picture

John the Baptist was the subject of at least eight paintings by the Italian Baroque artist Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio. This work, a brooding, "psychologically interiorized" oil-on-canvas portrait of John the Baptist as a young adult, shows him without any of his usual symbolic attributes (except for the cross he holds), and is considered by scholars the most radical portrait of the series. Caravaggio's unusual practice of composing directly on the canvas without any underpainting, incising salient features with the blunt end of his brush handle, or perhaps with a knife, is evident here particularly on John's left leg. This painting is in the collection of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Missouri.

Painting credit: Caravaggio

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