Wikipedia:Main Page history/2020 January 25

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From today's featured article

Æthelbald depicted in a
14th-century royal genealogy

Æthelbald, King of Wessex (died 860) was the second of five sons of King Æthelwulf of Wessex. Æthelbald's elder brother Æthelstan defeated the Vikings in 850 in the first recorded sea battle in English history, and probably died in the early 850s. The next year Æthelwulf and Æthelbald inflicted another defeat on the Vikings at the Battle of Aclea. In 855 Æthelwulf went on pilgrimage to Rome and appointed Æthelbald king of Wessex, while Æthelberht, the next oldest son, became king of Kent, which had been conquered by Wessex thirty years earlier. Æthelbald refused to give up his throne when his father returned to England in 856, and continued as king either of west Wessex or the whole territory until his father died in 858. Æthelbald then married his father's widow, Judith, a great-granddaughter of Charlemagne, to the scandal of later monastic chroniclers, and ruled Wessex until his own death. Æthelberht now re-united Wessex and Kent under his sole rule and they were never again divided. (Full article...)

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Ranjit Sitaram Pandit

... that Ranjit Sitaram Pandit (pictured) translated Kalhana's Rajatarangini while he was imprisoned?
... that the swing span of Macombs Dam Bridge was considered the world's heaviest movable mass at the time of its construction?
... that Queen Tuarii traveled to the Cook Islands to seek British intervention in Raiatea's war with France?
... that All the Freckles in the World, a Mexican coming-of-age romantic comedy film, was released on Netflix after finding success in theaters in Mexico?
... that sprinter Judith Ayaa, the first Ugandan woman to win a Commonwealth Games medal, later lived in poverty, begging on the streets of Kampala?
... that Hay-a-Park Gravel Pit is "one of the most northerly inland breeding populations of reed warbler in Britain"?
... that Yukari Miyake joined the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force to realize her dream of singing on stage?
... that ashes from a nearby fire left the freshly painted tower of radio station WCAI black instead of red?

In the news

Coronaviruses viewed under an electron microscope

In China, a new strain of coronavirus (examples pictured) infects more than a thousand people, killing at least forty-one.
Mikhail Mishustin is appointed Prime Minister of Russia following the resignation of Dmitry Medvedev and his cabinet.
Scientists announce that presolar stardust grains in the Murchison meteorite formed five to seven billion years ago, and are the oldest solid material found on Earth to date.

On this day

January 25: Feast day of Gregory of Nazianzus (Eastern Orthodoxy); Tatiana Day in Russia

Battle of Mikatagahara

1573 – Sengoku period: Takeda Shingen's forces defeated those of Tokugawa Ieyasu at the Battle of Mikatagahara (depicted), north of Hamamatsu in present-day Japan's Mikawa Province.
1792 – Thomas Hardy founded the London Corresponding Society to seek a "radical reform of parliament", later influencing the reform movements of early 19th-century England.
1971 – Idi Amin seized power from Ugandan president Milton Obote in a coup d'état, beginning eight years of military rule.
1993 – Five people were shot by Pakistani national Mir Aimal Kansi outside the Central Intelligence Agency headquarters in Langley, Virginia, resulting in two deaths.
2010 – Ethiopian Airlines Flight 409, en route to Addis Ababa, crashed into the Mediterranean Sea shortly after takeoff from Beirut, Lebanon, killing all 90 people on board.

Ma Xiguang (d. 951) · Anna Gardner (b. 1816) · Xavi (b. 1980)

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Today's featured picture

Virginia Woolf (25 January 1882 – 28 March 1941) was an English writer, considered one of the most important modernist authors of the 20th century. Having lost her mother, her half-sister and then her father early in life, her family moved within London from Kensington to the more bohemian Bloomsbury, where they adopted a free-spirited lifestyle. She began writing professionally in 1900, and it was in Bloomsbury that, in conjunction with her brothers and their intellectual friends, the artistic and literary Bloomsbury Group was formed. In 1912, she married political theorist and author Leonard Woolf. Her reputation was at its greatest during the 1930s, but declined following World War II. The growth of feminist criticism in the 1970s helped re-establish her reputation. She suffered from ongoing mental health issues and drowned herself during a fit of depression in 1941.

This picture is a studio portrait of Woolf at the age of 20, then known before her marriage as Virginia Stephen, taken in 1902 by British photographer George Charles Beresford.

Photograph credit: George Charles Beresford; restored by Adam Cuerden

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