Wikipedia:Main Page history/2020 May 28

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From today's featured article

The great spotted woodpecker (Dendrocopos major) is a medium-sized woodpecker with pied black and white plumage and a red patch on the lower belly. Males and young birds also have red markings on the neck or head. This species is found across Eurasia and parts of North Africa, in all types of woodlands. Some individuals have a tendency to wander, leading to the recent recolonisation of Ireland. Great spotted woodpeckers chisel into trees to find food or excavate nest holes, and also drum for contact and territorial advertisement; they have anatomical adaptations to manage the physical stresses from the hammering action. They can extract seeds from pine cones and insect larvae from inside trees, and will eat eggs and chicks of other birds. Both parents incubate the clutch of four to six eggs and continue to feed the chicks for about ten days after they fledge. The species has a large population and is not threatened. (Full article...)

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Did you know ...

Japanese incense burner in the Khalili Collection

... that Nasser Khalili's 1,400-piece collection of Meiji-era Japanese art (object pictured) is equalled only by the Japanese imperial collection in size and quality?
... that the video game The Longing can take up to 400 days to complete?
... that citizen journalist Chen Qiushi went missing while reporting on the COVID-19 outbreak in Wuhan?
... that after Congress limited presidential power granted by the Forest Reserve Act of 1891, President Theodore Roosevelt quickly protected 16 million acres of forest while the bill sat on his desk?
... that Quentin Edwards was asked not to return to Bradfield College after a schoolmaster found passionate letters sent to him by John Mortimer?
... that Venezuela won its first Olympic medal in 1952 with triple jumper Asnoldo Devonish, who competed while injured?
... that Ole Børud's guitar music on the album Sonrise, by the band Schaliach, was likened to a "metal symphony"?
... that after the 7th Infantry Regiment captured Hitler's Berghof on 4 May 1945, its commander, Colonel John A. Heintges, took Hermann Göring's 1941 Mercedes-Benz 540K Cabriolet B for his personal use?

In the news

COVID-19 pandemic

The aircraft involved in the accident, in 2015

In the United States, protests break out following the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
A Pakistan International Airlines passenger aircraft (pictured) crashes in Karachi, killing ninety-seven people.
Cyclone Amphan impacts eastern India and Bangladesh, killing over one hundred people and forcing the evacuation of more than four million others.

On this day

May 28: Republic Day in Azerbaijan (1918)

Bust of Louis Delgrès

1802 – In an attempt to resist the reintroduction of slavery in Guadeloupe, Louis Delgrès (bust pictured) and hundreds of his followers blew themselves up, killing many French troops in the process.
1892 – Scottish-American preservationist John Muir founded the environmental organization Sierra Club in San Francisco, California.
1901 – Mozaffar ad-Din, the shah of Persia, granted exclusive rights to prospect for oil in the country to William Knox D'Arcy.
1987 – Mathias Rust, a West German aviator, flew his Cessna 172 from Helsinki, Finland, through Soviet air defences, landing illegally near Red Square in Moscow.
2010 – A train derailment and collision in the West Midnapore district of West Bengal, India, caused the deaths of at least 148 passengers.

Wulfstan (d. 1023)
Joseph-Ignace Guillotin (b. 1738)
Ian Fleming (b. 1908)

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Today's featured picture

Abundantia was a divine personification of abundance and prosperity in ancient Rome. One explanation of the origin of the cornucopia myth, as related by Ovid, is that while the river god Achelous, in the form of a bull, was fighting Hercules, one of his horns was ripped off. The horn was taken up by the Naiads, who filled it with fruit and flowers, transforming it into a "horn of plenty", and gave it into Abundantia's care.

This oil-on-panel painting of Abundantia by Peter Paul Rubens, dating from around 1630, was probably a study for a tapestry. On her lap, the buxom goddess holds a cornucopia, spilling out an abundance of fruits and flowers, symbolising the goodness of nature for mankind. Two putti gather up the fruit, while a purse under her foot represents more material treasures. The painting is now in the National Museum of Western Art in Tokyo, Japan.

Painting credit: Peter Paul Rubens

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