Wikipedia:Main Page history/2014 February 25

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The King and I is a musical by the team of composer Richard Rodgers and dramatist Oscar Hammerstein II. It is based on the 1944 novel Anna and the King of Siam by Margaret Landon, which derives from the memoirs of Anna Leonowens, governess to the children of King Mongkut of Siam in the early 1860s. The musical relates the experiences of Anna, a British schoolteacher hired as part of the King's drive to modernize his country. Their relationship is marked by conflict through much of the piece, and a love that neither can admit. Rodgers and Hammerstein wrote the musical for veteran star Gertrude Lawrence. Rex Harrison, who played the King in the 1946 movie of Landon's book, was unavailable, so Yul Brynner was chosen. The musical premiered in March 1951 at Broadway's St. James Theatre and ran nearly three years. It was an immediate hit, winning Tony Awards for Best Musical and for Best Actress and Best Featured Actor for Lawrence and Brynner (pictured). A hit London run and U.S. national tour followed, together with a 1956 film for which Brynner won an Academy Award. Professional and amateur revivals of The King and I are staged regularly throughout the English-speaking world. (Full article...)

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... that Alexander Roslin painted his wife painting a pastel of Henrik Peill, but the painting within the painting (pictured) is a lost painting?
... that Firefly fans were developing their own video game based on the franchise before an official game, Firefly Online, was announced?
... that Frederick G. Coan was told about 2,000 people who had dug their own graves?
... that musician Rick Recht was inspired to create Jewish Rock Radio after seeing how Christian rock radio stations operated?
... that Zimbabwe's gold-winning women's field hockey team from the 1980 Olympics (pictured) were promised an ox each by the Prime Minister's wife, but got packages of meat instead?
... that Ezra Pound published a translation of Chinese poetry despite not understanding the language?

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February 25: Soviet Occupation Day in Georgia (1921); National Day in Kuwait (1961)

628 – Khosrau II, the last great king of the Sasanian Empire, was overthrown by his son Kavadh II.
1866 – Miners in Calaveras County, California, discovered a human skull that a prominent geologist claimed was proof (later disproven) that humans had existed during the Pliocene age.
1956 – In his speech "On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences" to the 20th Party Congress, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev denounced the personality cult and dictatorship of his predecessor Joseph Stalin.
1986 – Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos and his wife Imelda were ousted from power by the non-violent People Power Revolution, with Corazon Aquino (pictured) taking over the government.
1994 – Israeli physician Baruch Goldstein opened fire on Muslim Arabs praying at the mosque in Hebron's Cave of the Patriarchs, killing 29 people and wounding 125 others.

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Œnone is a poem written by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, in 1829. Inspired by the Greek mythological figure Oenone, first wife of Paris of Troy, the poem is a dramatic monologue following the lead-up to the Trojan War and the war itself. This illustration, by William Edward Frank Britten, is accompanied by the lines "O mother Ida, many-fountain'd Ida, / Dear mother Ida, harken ere I die".

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