Wikipedia:Main Page history/2019 May 21

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From today's featured article

Kim Deal

Title TK is the third studio album by American alternative rock band the Breeders, released in May 2002 on 4AD. The album, whose name means "title to come", generated three singles: "Off You", "Huffer", and "Son of Three"; it reached the top 100 in France, Germany, the UK, and Australia. After multiple changes in personnel and aborted recording attempts in the mid-to-late 1990s, singer and songwriter Kim Deal (pictured) began sessions with engineer Steve Albini in 1999. Musicians Mando Lopez, Richard Presley, and Jose Medeles, as well as former member Kelley Deal—Kim’s sister—joined the band, who continued recording with Albini in 2001 in Chicago. Two other songs were recorded with engineers Andrew Alekel and Mark Arnold in Los Angeles. The album has received generally positive reviews from critics, who have noted its inclusion of unexpected sounds, minimal instrumentation, and unconventional, sometimes dark lyrics. (Full article...)

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Did you know...

Princess Natalya Golitsyna

... that Princess Natalya Golitsyna (pictured) acquired the nicknames the "Moscow Venus" and the "Queen of Spades"?
... that the 2019 Peterborough recall petition led to the first successful recall of a Member of Parliament in the United Kingdom?
... that Massachusetts Bay settler Robert Coles was sentenced to wear a red letter "D" for drunkenness, which some scholars have argued later inspired Nathaniel Hawthorne's 1850 novel The Scarlet Letter?
... that the Nubra River rises from the Siachen Glacier, the second longest non-polar glacier in the world?
... that Fields Medal-winning mathematician Klaus Roth performed so poorly on the Mathematical Tripos that his tutor suggested he take "some commercial job with a statistical bias"?
... that The Trials of Shazam! was meant to update the Captain Marvel character for a modern audience?
... that explorer Guo Kun led the construction of China's first Antarctic research base, parts of which have been declared Historic Sites and Monuments in Antarctica?
... that the B-side to Chris Sievey's 1983 single "Camouflage" contained code for the song's music video for the ZX81 home computer?

In the news

Duncan Laurence

The Netherlands, represented by Duncan Laurence (pictured) with the song "Arcade", wins the Eurovision Song Contest.
The Ibiza affair, a political scandal, causes the collapse of the Austrian government and triggers a snap election.
The Liberal–National Coalition, led by Prime Minister Scott Morrison, wins the most seats in the Australian federal election.
Taiwan becomes the first state in Asia to legalize same-sex marriage.
Chinese-American architect I. M. Pei dies at the age of 102.

On this day

May 21

Kingda Ka roller coaster

878 – Arab–Byzantine wars: The city of Syracuse was captured by the Aghlabids, during the Muslim conquest of Sicily.
1894 – The Manchester Ship Canal, linking Manchester in North West England to the Irish Sea, officially opened, becoming the world's largest navigation canal at the time.
1911 – Mexican President Porfirio Díaz and the revolutionary Francisco Madero signed the Treaty of Ciudad Juárez to end the fighting between the forces of both men, concluding the initial phase of the Mexican Revolution.
1939 – King George VI and Queen Elizabeth dedicated Canada's National War Memorial in Ottawa.
2005 – The world's tallest roller coaster, Kingda Ka (pictured), opened at Six Flags Great Adventure in Jackson, New Jersey, U.S.

Olaf the Black (d. 1237) · Rudolf Koller (b. 1828) · Nadine Dorries (b. 1957)

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Today's featured picture

The Annunciation is an oil-on-oak panel painting attributed to the Early Netherlandish painter Hans Memling. It depicts the Annunciation, the announcement by the archangel Gabriel to the Virgin Mary that she would conceive and become the mother of Jesus, described in the Gospel of Luke. Completed c. 1482, it was partially transferred to canvas in the 1920s. The panel shows Mary in a domestic interior with two attendant angels; Gabriel is dressed in ecclesiastical robes, while a dove representing the Holy Spirit hovers above Mary. It expands upon the Annunciation wing of Rogier van der Weyden's c. 1455 Saint Columba Altarpiece. According to art historian Maryan Ainsworth, the work is a "startlingly original image, rich in connotations for the viewer or worshiper". The painting is held in the Robert Lehman collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

Painting credit: Hans Memling

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