Wikipedia:Main Page history/2017 August 23

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From today's featured article

T3 was a sea-going torpedo boat operated by the Royal Yugoslav Navy between 1921 and 1941. Originally 78 T, a 250t-class torpedo boat commissioned on 23 August 1914 by the Austro-Hungarian Navy, she saw active service during World War I, performing convoy, escort and minesweeping tasks, anti-submarine operations and shore bombardment missions. Following Austria-Hungary's defeat in 1918, she was allocated to Yugoslavia and renamed T3. She was captured by the Italians during the Axis invasion of Yugoslavia in April 1941. After her main armament was modernised, she served with the Royal Italian Navy as T3, although she was only used for coastal and second-line tasks. Following the Italian capitulation in September 1943, she was captured by Germany, and after being fitted with additional anti-aircraft guns, she served with the German Navy and the Navy of the Independent State of Croatia as TA48. In German and Croatian service her crew of 52 consisted entirely of Croatian officers and enlisted men. She was sunk by Allied aircraft in February 1945 while in the port of Trieste, where she had been built. (Full article...)

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In the news

The solar eclipse

The Supreme Court of India rules that the practice of instant divorce is unconstitutional.
A total solar eclipse (pictured) crosses the contiguous United States for the first time since 1918.
At least 23 people are killed and 156 others are injured in a train accident in Khatauli, India.
A knife attack in Turku, Finland, kills 2 people and injures 8 others.
Three separate attacks in Catalonia, Spain, kill at least 15 people and injure more than 100 others.
The Hong Kong Court of Appeal sentences three prominent pro-democracy activists to jail.
At least 400 people are killed by mudslides in and around Freetown, Sierra Leone.

On this day...

August 23: Day of Remembrance for Victims of Stalinism and Nazism/Black Ribbon Day in Canada, parts of the European Union, Georgia, and the United States

Sacco and Vanzetti

1873 – The Albert Bridge, spanning the River Thames in London, opened.
1898 – The Southern Cross Expedition, the first British venture of the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration, departed from London.
1927 – After a controversial trial, and despite worldwide protests, Italian-born American anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti (both pictured) were executed via electrocution in Massachusetts for murder.
1943 – World War II: The decisive Soviet victory in the Battle of Kursk gave the Red Army the strategic initiative for the rest of the war.
2010 – A former Philippine National Police officer hijacked a tourist bus in Manila and held its occupants hostage for nearly 11 hours before being killed by police.

Ali al-Ridha (d. 818) · Henry Every (b. 1659) · Oscar Hammerstein II (d. 1960)

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Today's featured picture

The Gleaners is an oil painting by Jean-François Millet completed in 1857. It depicts three peasant women gleaning stray stalks of wheat from a field after the harvest. The painting, with its sympathetic depiction of what were then the lowest ranks of rural society, was received poorly by the French upper classes, but today is Millet's best known work.

Painting: Jean-François Millet

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