Wikipedia:Main Page history/2021 December 8b

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From today's featured article

Caroline Johnson

The 2016 Sleaford and North Hykeham by-election took place on 8 December, triggered by the resignation of Member of Parliament (MP) Stephen Phillips, a Conservative, who left Parliament due to policy differences with Theresa May over Brexit. The constituency had been held by the Conservatives since it was first contested in the 1997 general election and was considered a safe seat for the party. Sleaford and North Hykeham was estimated to have had a vote share of more than 60 per cent in favour of leaving the EU in the June 2016 EU membership referendum and Brexit was a key issue in the by-election campaign. The Conservatives nominated Caroline Johnson (pictured), a paediatrician; she won the by-election with more than 50 per cent of the vote. The UK Independence Party came second with 13 per cent of the vote, followed by the Liberal Democrats with 11 per cent and Labour with 10 per cent. The result was widely seen as poor for the Labour Party, whose vote share decreased by 7 per cent. (Full article...)

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In the news

Olaf Scholz

Chief of the Defence Staff of India Bipin Rawat and 12 others die in a helicopter crash.
A coalition government led by newly-elected Chancellor Olaf Scholz (pictured) is formed in Germany.
A prison fire kills at least 38 inmates and injures over 69 others in Gitega, Burundi.
Karl Nehammer becomes Chancellor of Austria following the resignation of Alexander Schallenberg.

On this day

December 8: Feast of the Immaculate Conception (Roman Rite Catholicism); Rōhatsu in Japan

Pope Pius IX

1660 – Margaret Hughes appeared professionally on the English stage; she is thought to have been the first woman to do so.
1854 – Pope Pius IX (pictured) promulgated the apostolic constitution Ineffabilis Deus, proclaiming the dogmatic definition of the Immaculate Conception, which holds that the Virgin Mary was conceived free of original sin.
1941 – The Holocaust: The Chełmno extermination camp in occupied Poland, the first such Nazi camp to kill Jews, began operations.
1971 – Indo-Pakistani War: Following their successful attack three days earlier, a small Indian Navy strike force attacked the Port of Karachi again and created a de facto blockade.
1991 – Belarusian, Russian and Ukrainian leaders signed the Belovezh Accords, agreeing to dissolve the Soviet Union and establish the Commonwealth of Independent States.

Maria Josepha of Austria (b. 1699)
Jean Sibelius (b. 1865)
Betty Holberton (d. 2001)

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Today's featured picture

Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson (8 December 1832 – 26 April 1910) was a Norwegian writer who received the 1903 Nobel Prize in Literature "as a tribute to his noble, magnificent and versatile poetry, which has always been distinguished by both the freshness of its inspiration and the rare purity of its spirit". The first Norwegian Nobel laureate, he was a prolific polemicist and extremely influential in Norwegian public life and Scandinavian cultural debate. Bjørnson is considered to be one of the four great Norwegian writers, alongside Ibsen, Lie, and Kielland, and is also celebrated for his lyrics to the Norwegian national anthem, "Ja, vi elsker dette landet".

Photograph credit: Erwin Raupp; restored by Adam Cuerden

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