Wikipedia:Main Page history/2019 December 2

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From today's featured article

Chesapeake was a 38-gun wooden-hulled, three-masted heavy frigate of the United States Navy. She was one of the original six frigates authorized by the Naval Act of 1794 and designed by Joshua Humphreys as the young navy's capital ships. Launched at the Gosport Navy Yard on 2 December 1799, Chesapeake began her career during the Quasi-War with France and saw service in the First Barbary War. On 22 June 1807 she was fired upon by HMS Leopard of the Royal Navy for refusing to allow a search for deserters. Chesapeake's commanding officer, James Barron, was court-martialed, and the United States instituted the Embargo Act of 1807 against Great Britain. The Chesapeake–Leopard affair and the Embargo Act were two of the precipitating factors that led to the War of 1812. Chesapeake captured five British merchant ships early in the war before being taken by HMS Shannon. Her timbers, sold in 1819, are now part of the Chesapeake Mill in Wickham, England. (Full article...)

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Did you know ...

Steven Matz

... that before they were on the New York Mets together, baseball pitchers Steven Matz (pictured) and Marcus Stroman faced each other in a high school game that a Mets scout called "one of the best duels I've ever seen"?
... that Rhagoletis juglandis is a species of fly that infests walnuts?
... that former Playboy model Susie Owens hand-produced up to 50,000 vials of perfume and lotion each year in her garage?
... that The Cedars School is the first senior school in Great Britain to be based on the ethos of Opus Dei?
... that plant physiologist Hu Dujing cultivated Eucommia ulmoides to produce a substitute for rubber?
... that the Lord & Taylor Building in New York City incorporated innovative window displays that could be lowered into the basement and swapped out?
... that British journalist Anna Kessel co-founded the charity Women in Football, and initiated the Blue Plaque Rebellion, to promote gender equality for women in sport?
... that HKmap.live, an app tracking protests and police presence in Hong Kong, was removed by Apple from its App Store less than a week after being approved?

In the news

Luis Lacalle Pou

Luis Lacalle Pou (pictured) of the National Party is elected President of Uruguay.
An earthquake in northwestern Albania kills at least 50 people and injures more than 900 others.
Several hundred diamonds and jewelled items are stolen from the Green Vault museum at Dresden Castle in Germany.
In Canadian football, the Winnipeg Blue Bombers defeat the Hamilton Tiger-Cats to win the Grey Cup.

On this day

December 2

Napoleon III

1823 – U.S. president James Monroe issued the Monroe Doctrine, a proclamation of opposition to European colonialism in the New World.
1852 – Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte (pictured) established the Second French Empire, declaring himself Emperor of the French as Napoleon III.
1950 – Korean War: With the conclusion of the Battle of the Ch'ongch'on River, the Chinese army expelled UN forces from North Korea.
1989 – The Malayan Communist Party and the Malaysian government signed a peace accord to end the 21-year Communist insurgency.
2001 – Less than two months after disclosing accounting violations, Texas-based energy firm Enron filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, evaporating nearly $11 billion in shareholder wealth.

William Shirley (b. 1694) · John Breckinridge (b. 1760) · Chaudhry Muhammad Ali (d. 1982)

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From today's featured list

Shepard Hall, CCNY

There have been thirteen Nobel laureates associated with the City University of New York (CUNY). The Nobel Prizes are awarded annually by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, the Karolinska Institute, and the Norwegian Nobel Committee to individuals who make outstanding contributions in the fields of chemistry, physics, literature, peace, and physiology or medicine. They were established by the 1895 will of Alfred Nobel, which dictates that the awards should be administered by the Nobel Foundation. CUNY considers any laureate who attended one of its senior colleges as an affiliated laureate. Arthur Kornberg, who graduated from the City College of New York (pictured), a senior college of CUNY, in 1937, was the first CUNY laureate, winning the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1959. Herbert A. Hauptman and Jerome Karle, both of whom graduated from the City College in 1937 with Kornberg, jointly won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1985, the only CUNY laureates to do so. (Full list...)

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Today's featured picture

Golden Summer, Eaglemont, is an 1889 oil-on-canvas landscape painting by Australian artist Arthur Streeton. Painted en plein air at the height of a summer drought, it depicts a sunlit, undulating plain, stretching away to the distant blue Dandenong Ranges, outside Melbourne. In 1892, it became the first painting by an Australian-born artist to be exhibited at London's Royal Academy of Arts. Regarded as a masterpiece of Australian impressionism, it is currently on display at the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra, which acquired the painting in 1995 for A$3.5 million, a record price for an Australian painting at that time.

Painting credit: Arthur Streeton

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