Wikipedia:Main Page history/2020 February 3

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From today's featured article

Ghost Stories was a U.S. pulp magazine that published 64 issues between 1926 and 1932. It was one of the earliest competitors to Weird Tales, the first magazine to specialize in the fantasy and occult fiction genre. Ghost Stories was a companion magazine to True Story and True Detective Stories, and focused almost entirely on stories about ghosts, many of which were written by staff writers but presented under pseudonyms as true confessions. These were often accompanied by faked photographs to make the stories appear more believable. Ghost Stories also ran original and reprinted contributions, including works by Robert E. Howard, Carl Jacobi, and Frank Belknap Long. Among the reprints were Agatha Christie's "The Last Seance" (under the title "The Woman Who Stole a Ghost"), several stories by H. G. Wells, and Charles Dickens's "The Signal-Man". The magazine was initially successful, but had begun to lose readers by 1930, and ceased publication at the start of 1932. (Full article...)

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Did you know ...

Painting of the Shelton Oak

... that the hollow Shelton Oak (pictured) near Shrewsbury was so big that a party of eight could dance a quadrille inside it?
... that artist and illustrator Rune Naito, credited with pioneering the culture and aesthetic of kawaii, also contributed erotic illustrations to the gay men's magazine Barazoku?
... that a bus shelter on New York City's Q26 route was the subject of two 1948 lawsuits that alleged negative effects on nearby property values?
... that Henry Eastburn studied under his uncle John Smeaton before undertaking his own civil engineering projects, such as the Basingstoke Canal?
... that the Creedence Clearwater Revival song "Keep On Chooglin'" popularized the neologism "chooglin'", which has been interpreted as a sexual term?
... that the life expectancy at Gusen concentration camp was as short as six months?
... that Girmay Zahilay defeated a six-term incumbent on King County Council in Washington?
... that IG-11, from the Star Wars series The Mandalorian, so closely resembles the character IG-88 that fans and journalists initially confused the two?

In the news

Map showing the UK (in orange)
and the EU (in blue)

The United Kingdom leaves the European Union and begins an eleven-month transition period.
The World Health Organization declares the outbreak of respiratory disease from a novel coronavirus to be a Public Health Emergency of International Concern.
Floods and landslides in southeastern Brazil kill at least sixty people and leave thousands of others homeless.

On this day

February 3: Feast day of Saint Laurence of Canterbury (Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, Anglicanism); Four Chaplains' Day in the United States; Setsubun in Japan

José de San Martín

1813 – Argentine War of Independence: José de San Martín (portrait shown) and his Regiment of Mounted Grenadiers defeated Spanish royalist forces in the Battle of San Lorenzo.
1870 – The Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was ratified, granting voting rights to citizens regardless of "race, color, or previous condition of servitude".
1930 – The Communist Party of Indochina, the Communist Party of Annam and the Communist League of Indochina merged to form the Communist Party of Vietnam.
2010 – A cast bronze sculpture, L'Homme qui marche I, by Swiss sculptor Alberto Giacometti, was sold for £65 million (US$103.7 million), setting the record for the most expensive sculpture sold at auction.

Scipione Rebiba (b. 1504) · Isaac Baker Brown (d. 1873) · Dolly Rudeman (b. 1902)

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From today's featured list

Lawrence Taylor

The Associated Press NFL Defensive Player of the Year Award is given by the Associated Press to the most outstanding defensive player in the National Football League (NFL) at the end of every season. It has been awarded since 1971. The winner is decided by votes from a panel of fifty AP sportswriters who regularly cover the NFL. Lawrence Taylor (pictured) and J. J. Watt are the only three-time winners of the award. Joe Greene, Mike Singletary, Bruce Smith, Reggie White, Ray Lewis, and Aaron Donald have each won it twice. Taylor is the only player to win the award as a rookie, doing so in 1981. White is the only player to win the award with two different teams, winning in 1987 with the Philadelphia Eagles and again with the Green Bay Packers in 1998. Watt is the only player to win the award unanimously, receiving fifty first-place votes in 2014. (Full list...)

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Today's featured picture

Ronald McNair (left), Guion Bluford (center) and Frederick D. Gregory (right) were the first three African-American astronauts to travel into space. Bluford became the second person of African descent, and the first African American, in space, as part of the STS-8 mission, which launched on August 30, 1983. He was a NASA mission specialist on three more Space Shuttle missions: STS-61-A, STS-39 and STS-53. McNair became the second African American to travel into space, as mission specialist on STS-41-B, which launched on February 3, 1984. He died on his second mission, STS-51-L, which ended in the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster on January 28, 1986. Gregory was the first African American to pilot a Space Shuttle, during STS-51-B, which launched on April 29, 1985. He became the first African American to command a mission, during STS-33, and was also the commander of STS-44.

This picture shows the three astronauts in 1978, the year in which they were selected as members of NASA Astronaut Group 8, along with thirty-two others.

Photograph credit: NASA; restored by Coffeeandcrumbs

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