Wikipedia:Main Page history/2021 April 5b

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From today's featured article

Barracks at Auschwitz concentration camp

Siegfried Lederer escaped from Auschwitz on the night of 5 April 1944, wearing an SS uniform provided by Viktor Pestek, a guard at the concentration camp (barracks pictured). Pestek opposed the Holocaust because of his Catholic faith and infatuation with Renée Neumann, a Jewish prisoner. Lederer, a former Czechoslovak Army officer and a Jewish member of the Czech resistance, tried unsuccessfully to warn the Jews at Theresienstadt Ghetto about the mass murders at Auschwitz. After he and Pestek returned to Auschwitz in an attempt to rescue Neumann and her mother, Pestek was arrested and later executed. Lederer returned to occupied Czechoslovakia, where he rejoined the resistance movement and attempted to smuggle a report on Auschwitz to the International Committee of the Red Cross in Switzerland. After the war he remained in Czechoslovakia. The story of the escape was retold by Lederer, historian Erich Kulka, and other writers. (Full article...)

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Did you know ...

Martin Luther King Jr.

... that photographer Benedict J. Fernandez was invited several times to the home of Martin Luther King Jr. (pictured), where he was able to see him "as a man, a father, a husband"?
... that rapper Pop Smoke recorded "Diana" the night before he was murdered?
... that after Mary Lou Godbold announced her candidacy for the Mississippi Senate, all of the other candidates withdrew from the race?
... that when the tower of Sioux Falls radio station KISD collapsed in 1968, it narrowly missed a train motel run by the station's former owner?
... that as a fifteen-year-old student, ballerina Angelica Generosa replaced an injured schoolmate to perform a lead role in Balanchine's Stars and Stripes after two weeks of rehearsals?
... that Leonard Bernstein rediscovered his setting of Psalm 148 for voice and piano, dated 1935, in the mid-1980s, and it was first performed in 1993?
... that the Thai Supreme Court opinion concerning the murder of Jenjira Ployangunsri is often quoted on Valentine's Day?
... that a 1947 song tells you how to cook rabbit at top speed?

In the news

Cyclone Seroja

Cyclone Seroja (satellite image shown) makes landfall in Indonesia and East Timor, killing at least 160 people and displacing thousands of others.
In rowing, both Cambridge men's and women's crews win The Boat Race.
An express train derails in Hualien County, Taiwan, killing at least 50 people.
Alfred Aho and Jeffrey Ullman receive the Turing Award for their work on programming language compilers.

On this day

April 5: Hansik in South Korea (2021)

Akashi Kaikyō Bridge

1710 – The Statute of Anne, the first legislation in Great Britain providing for copyright regulated by the government and courts, received royal assent and went into effect five days later.
1936 – An F5 tornado struck Tupelo, Mississippi, and killed at least 216 people during one of the deadliest tornado outbreaks in U.S. history.
1966 – During the Buddhist Uprising, South Vietnamese military prime minister Nguyễn Cao Kỳ personally attempted to lead the capture of the restive city of Đà Nẵng before backing down.
1998 – The Akashi Kaikyō Bridge (pictured), the longest suspension bridge in the world, linking Awaji Island and Kobe in Japan, opened to traffic.

Ivan Kőszegi (d. 1308)
Henry Havelock (b. 1795)
Julio Ángel Fernández (b. 1946)

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From today's featured list

Bob Horner

The Golden Spikes Award is bestowed annually to the best amateur baseball player in the United States. The award, created by USA Baseball and sponsored by the Major League Baseball Players Association, was first presented in 1978. It is given to an amateur player who best exhibits and combines "exceptional on-field ability and exemplary sportsmanship". The award is considered the most prestigious in amateur baseball. Ten winners of the Golden Spikes Award are members of the National College Baseball Hall of Fame, including Bob Horner (pictured), the inaugural winner. In that same year, he was the first overall MLB draft pick and proceeded to win the Rookie of the Year Award. Seven Golden Spikes Award winners went on to become the first overall draft pick. Although it can be given to any amateur player, the award has always been given to a college baseball player. In addition, only two winners were not attending NCAA Division I institutions when they won the award—junior college players Alex Fernandez in 1990 and Bryce Harper in 2010. The most recent recipient of the award is Adley Rutschman of the Oregon State Beavers. (Full list...)

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Today's featured picture

Eunice Pinney (1770–1849) was an American folk artist active in the towns of Windsor and Simsbury, Connecticut. According to art historian Jean Lipman, a specialist in American folk painting, Pinney and her contemporary Mary Ann Willson are considered two of the earliest American painters to work in the medium of watercolor. This painting, entitled Lolotte et Werther, depicts a scene from Goethe's popular novel The Sorrows of Young Werther, and is in the collection of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.

Painting credit: Eunice Pinney

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