Wikipedia:Main Page history/2017 October 29

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From today's featured article

Paul Palaiologos Tagaris (c. 1330 – after 1394) was a Byzantine Greek monk, a swindler, and an impostor. A scion of the Tagaris family, Paul also claimed a—somewhat dubious—connection with the Palaiologos dynasty that ruled the Byzantine Empire at the time. Married as a teenager, he left his wife and became a monk, but soon his fraudulent practices embroiled him in scandal. Fleeing Constantinople, he travelled widely, from Palestine to Persia and Georgia and eventually, via Ukraine and Hungary, to Italy, Latin Greece, Cyprus and France. During his long and tumultuous career, Paul was appointed an Orthodox bishop, sold ordinations to ecclesiastical offices, pretended to be the Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem, switched from Greek Orthodoxy to Roman Catholicism and back again, supported both the See of Rome and the Avignon anti-popes in the Western Schism, and managed to be named Latin Patriarch of Constantinople. In the end, his deceptions unmasked, he returned to Constantinople, where he confessed his sins before a synod in 1394. (Full article...)

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Did you know...

Stanley McDougall

... that Sergeant Stanley McDougall (pictured) was awarded the Victoria Cross for single-handedly killing many Germans with a Lewis gun during the First Battle of Dernancourt?
... that Francis Poulenc composed the motets for male voices Quatre petites prières de saint François d’Assise on the request of a relative who was a Franciscan monk?
... that the film NUDE is about a talent search that was inspired by the Pirelli Calendars of the 1970s?
... that Jean Ginsburg established one of the first clinics in Britain for menopausal women?
... that Brigham Young Unversity's International Harp Archive has more than 11,000 scores and sound recordings that feature the harp?
... that Cuban parliamentarian Teté Puebla is the first female general in the nation's history?
... that when breeding, the polychaete worm Syllis prolifera produces a detachable "stolon" which joins other stolons to swarm in the water column?
... that Usain Bolt and Roger Federer have each won the Laureus World Sports Award for Sportsman of the Year a record four times since its inception in 2000?

In the news

Xi Jinping

Catalonia issues a unilateral declaration of independence from Spain, whose government imposes direct rule under Article 155 of its constitution.
President Nursultan Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan announces that the Kazakh language will begin using a Latin script, rather than the current Cyrillic script.
The High Court of Australia finds that five parliamentarians are ineligible to serve.
At the National Congress of the Communist Party of China, Xi Jinping (pictured) assumes his second term as General Secretary, and the political theory Xi Jinping Thought is written into the party's constitution.
In Japan, the ruling coalition, led by incumbent Prime Minister Shinzō Abe, retains its house supermajority in the general election.

On this day...

October 29: Republic Day in Turkey (1923)

Mount Hood, Oregon

539 BC – Cyrus the Great captured Babylon, incorporating the Neo-Babylonian Empire and making the Achaemenid Empire the largest in the history of the world to that time.
1792 – Lt. William Broughton, a member of George Vancouver's expedition, observed a peak in what is now Oregon, U.S., and named it Mount Hood (pictured) after British admiral Samuel Hood.
1917 – The Military Revolutionary Committee of the Petrograd Soviet, in charge of preparing for and carrying out the Russian Revolution, was established.
1960 – The C-46 airliner carrying the Cal Poly Mustangs football team crashed during takeoff from Toledo Express Airport in Ohio, U.S., resulting in 22 deaths.
1999 – About 10,000 people died when a supercyclone hit the Indian state of Odisha near the city of Bhubaneswar.

Dirck Coornhert (d. 1590) · Narcisa de León (b. 1877) · Lipman Bers (d. 1993)

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Today's featured picture

Northeaster is an oil painting on canvas completed by the American artist Winslow Homer in 1895. One of several paintings on marine subjects by the artist during his time in Maine, it presents viewers with a struggle of elements between the sea and the rocky shore. It is on display in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

Painting: Winslow Homer

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