Wikipedia:Main Page history/2014 May 28

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From today's featured article

Roy Dowling (1901–1969) was a senior commander in the Royal Australian Navy (RAN). He graduated from the Royal Australian Naval College in 1919 and was given command of the sloop HMAS Swan in 1937. During World War II, he saw action in the Mediterranean aboard HMS Naiad (surviving her sinking in 1942), served as Deputy Chief of Naval Staff, and commanded HMAS Hobart in the South West Pacific, earning the Distinguished Service Order. Dowling took command of the RAN's first aircraft carrier, HMAS Sydney, in 1948. He rose to become Chief of Naval Staff (CNS), the RAN's highest-ranking position, from 1955 until 1959. As CNS he had to deal with shortages of money, manpower and equipment, and with the increasing role of the United States in Australia's defence planning at the expense of traditional ties with Britain. Knighted in 1957, he served as Chairman of the Chiefs of Staff Committee from 1959 until 1961, when he retired. In 1963 he was appointed a Knight Commander of the Royal Victorian Order and became Australian Secretary to HM Queen Elizabeth II, serving until his death in 1969. (Full article...)

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Did you know...

From Wikipedia's new and recently improved content:

... that writer and pharmacist Hagop Terzian (pictured) was imprisoned, deported, and ultimately murdered during the Armenian Genocide?
... that the 2001 Pepsi 400, the first race at Daytona International Speedway since Dale Earnhardt's death, was won by his son?
... that outsider art dealer Monika Kinley started her career in the art world by selling postcards at the Tate Gallery?
... that the chain moray sometimes forages in tide pools and can survive for up to half an hour out of water?
... that Medal of Honor recipient Victor Vifquain attempted to kidnap Confederate President Jefferson Davis?
... that Romance by Luis Miguel was credited by music critics for reviving the bolero genre?
... that business author Liane Davey uses the label "bobblehead" for a team that underperforms due to excess conformity?

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In the news

Petro Poroshenko (pictured) is elected President of Ukraine.
In ice hockey, the World Championship concludes with Russia defeating Finland in the final.
The EU election concludes with the European People's Party group maintaining its plurality of seats in the European Parliament.
Winter Sleep, directed by Nuri Bilge Ceylan, wins the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival.
Mahafarid Amir Khosravi is executed after being convicted in the largest fraud investigation in Iran since the 1979 Revolution.
In rugby union, the Heineken Cup concludes with Toulon defeating Saracens in the final.

Ongoing: Ukrainian unrest – Balkan flooding

Recent deaths

On this day...

May 28: Republic Day in Armenia and Azerbaijan (both 1918); Yom Yerushalayim in Israel (2014)

1588 – Anglo-Spanish War: The Spanish Armada (a galleass pictured), with 130 ships and over 30,000 men, set sail from Lisbon for the English Channel in an attempt to invade England.
1754 – French and Indian War: Led by 22-year-old George Washington, a company of colonial militia from Virginia ambushed a force of 35 Canadiens in the Battle of Jumonville Glen.
1937 – The rise of Neville Chamberlain culminated when he was summoned to Buckingham Palace to "kiss hands" and accept the office of Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
1987 – West German aviator Mathias Rust flew his Cessna 172 through the supposedly impregnable Soviet air defense system and landed in Red Square, Moscow.
2004 – Ayad Allawi was unanimously elected by the Iraqi Governing Council to be the interim Prime Minister of Iraq.

More anniversaries: May 27 – May 28 – May 29

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It is now May 28, 2014 (UTC) – Reload this page

Today's featured picture

"The Deserted House" is a four-stanza poem written by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, in 1830, and included in his collection Poems, Chiefly Lyrical. The poem is characterised by its reliance on short lines which alternate in rhyme and meter to prevent a felicitous feel, a technique which has drawn much positive critical commentary. In the poem, Tennyson uses the image of a dark house as a metaphor for a dead body, underlining it with the closing stanza:

Come away: for Life and Thought
Here no longer dwell;
But in a city glorious—
A great and distant city—have bought
A mansion incorruptible.
Would they could have stayed with us!

This illustration by W. E. F. Britten, showing the titular house, accompanied the poem in a 1901 reprint.

Illustration: W. E. F. Britten; restoration: Adam Cuerden

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