Wikipedia:Main Page history/2019 January 6

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From today's featured article

Weather Machine is a lumino-kinetic bronze sculpture in the U.S. city of Portland, Oregon, that serves as a weather beacon, displaying a daily weather prediction at noon. The approximately 30-foot-tall (9 m) sculpture was installed in 1988 in the northwest corner of Pioneer Courthouse Square. Two thousand people attended its dedication, broadcast live nationally from the square by Today weatherman Willard Scott. During its daily two-minute sequence, which includes a trumpet fanfare, mist, and flashing lights, the machine displays one of three metal symbols as a prediction for the following 24-hour period: a sun for clear weather, a blue heron for drizzle and transitional weather, or a dragon and mist for rainy weather. The sculpture includes two bronze wind scoops and displays the temperature via vertical colored lights along its stem. The air quality index is also displayed by a light system below the stainless steel globe. (Full article...)

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Did you know...

The Magi visiting Jesus

... that the Epiphany hymn "Earth Has Many a Noble City" about the biblical Magi (pictured) was originally written by a Roman governor?
... that Joseph Jenckes Jr., the founder of Pawtucket, Rhode Island, was arrested and jailed for making threatening remarks about the king of England?
... that organic nuclear reactors, widely reseached in the 1950s and 1960s, replaced the water normally used to cool the reactor core with various organic fluids?
... that Björn Ambrosiani spent six years excavating at the Viking Age settlement Birka?
... that Peter Cornelius wrote poems and music for his song cycle Weihnachtslieder, which included a popular melody in the piano accompaniment for a song about the Three Kings?
... that in November 2018, Matthew Hedges received a pardon from his life sentence for spying in the United Arab Emirates?
... that Shekhar: Ek Jivani by Agyeya is considered the first psychoanalytical novel in Hindi literature?
... that in 2007, Peter Morris was "discovered" by Peter Morris?

In the news

Michael van Gerwen

The China National Space Administration's Chang'e 4 becomes the first spacecraft to land on the far side of the Moon.
A train accident on the Great Belt Fixed Link in Denmark kills eight passengers.
In darts, Michael van Gerwen (pictured) defeats Michael Smith to win the PDC World Championship.
NASA's New Horizons space probe performs a successful flyby of trans-Neptunian object Ultima Thule.
An apartment block collapses in Magnitogorsk, Russia, killing thirty-nine people.

On this day

January 6: Little Christmas in Ireland

Maria Montessori

1066 – Harold Godwinson, the last Anglo-Saxon king before the Norman conquest, was crowned King of England.
1540 – King Henry VIII of England married Anne of Cleves, but the marriage was annulled six months later.
1907 – Italian educator Maria Montessori (pictured) opened her first school and day-care centre for working-class children in Rome, employing the philosophy of education that now bears her name.
1960 – National Airlines Flight 2511, traveling from New York City to Miami, exploded in midair due to a bomb placed by an unknown party, resulting in the deaths of all 34 people on board.
1977 – The record label EMI ended its contract with the English punk rock band Sex Pistols in response to its members' disruptive behaviour at Heathrow Airport two days earlier.

Alessandro de' Medici, Duke of Florence (d. 1537) · Clarence King (b. 1842) · Nigella Lawson (b. 1960)

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Today's featured picture

The Larsen Ice Shelf is a long ice shelf in the Weddell Sea, extending along the east coast of the Antarctic Peninsula. It is named after Norwegian explorer Carl Anton Larsen, who sailed along the ice front in 1893. Composed of a series of shelves along the coast, named with letters from A to G, since the mid-1990s the Larsen Ice Shelf has been disintegrating, with the collapse of Larsen B in 2002 being particularly dramatic. A large section of the Larsen C shelf broke away in July 2017 to form an iceberg known as A-68. The rift that led to this breakaway (pictured) is about 110 kilometres (68 mi) long, 90 metres (300 ft) wide and 500 metres (1,600 ft) deep. Originally covering an area of 33,000 square miles (85,000 km²), the Larsen Ice Shelf now covers an area of 26,000 square miles (67,000 km²).

Photograph: NASA/John Sonntag

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