Wikipedia:Main Page history/2021 July 23b

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From today's featured article

Arthur Blackburn (1892–1960) was an Australian soldier, lawyer, politician, and recipient of the Victoria Cross. Enlisting in the Australian Imperial Force in 1914, he fought with his unit for most of the Gallipoli campaign of 1915, during which he was commissioned. On 23 July 1916, during the Battle of Pozières in France, he led four sorties to drive Germans from a strong point using hand grenades and captured 370 yards (340 m) of trench. He fought in the Battle of Mouquet Farm in August, then was evacuated to Australia due to illness. He served as a member of the South Australian parliament in 1918–1921. After the outbreak of World War II, Blackburn led the 2/3rd Machine Gun Battalion during the Syria–Lebanon campaign in 1941, personally accepting the surrender of Damascus. In early 1942, his battalion was deployed to Java in the Dutch East Indies. Captured by the Japanese, Blackburn spent the rest of the war as a prisoner of war. After the war, he served on the Commonwealth Court of Conciliation and Arbitration. (Full article...)

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Did you know ...

Johann Rist

... that "O Ewigkeit, du Donnerwort", translated as "Eternity! tremendous Word", is a hymn by Johann Rist (pictured) that served as the basis for the first work in Bach's chorale cantata cycle?
... that Barakat Al-Harthi missed his layover and lost some of his sports equipment before competing for Oman at the 2016 Summer Olympics?
... that although the Pat Buchanan campaign commercial Meatballs was created by a Houston-based ad agency, it was not initially aired in Houston, lest its message turn off voters?
... that income inequality in China is considered to be a major cause of mass incidents?
... that in 1593, French amateur mathematician François Viète found the first formula in European mathematics to represent an infinite process, a product of square roots that he used to compute $π$ ?
... that Marita Camacho Quirós, who was First Lady of Costa Rica (1962–1966), is the oldest former first lady in the world and a supercentenarian?
... that in Dead Blondes and Bad Mothers, Jude Ellison Doyle proposes that Frankenstein is about maternal fear that the author Mary Shelley experienced after family tragedies?
... that Duffy Lewis was the only major league player to pinch hit for Babe Ruth?

In the news

Brisbane

The Australian city of Brisbane (pictured) is announced as the host city of the 2032 Summer Olympics.
In sumo, Terunofuji Haruo becomes the 73rd yokozuna.
Liverpool Maritime Mercantile City in England is stripped of its status as a UNESCO World Heritage Site due to modern development in the area.
In basketball, the Milwaukee Bucks defeat the Phoenix Suns to win the NBA Finals.
Investigative journalists at the Pegasus Project report that multiple governments have used cyberweapons against heads of state, journalists, human rights activists, political opponents and dissidents.

On this day

July 23: Birthday of Haile Selassie (Rastafari); Sports Day in Japan (2021)

Megawati Sukarnoputri

1319 – A fleet led by the Knights Hospitaller sank 22 of 28 ships of the Turkish Aydınid emirate.
1860 – The trial of the Eastbourne manslaughter, which later became an important legal precedent in the United Kingdom for discussions of corporal punishment in schools, began in Lewes.
1921 – The first National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party opened in a house in Shanghai.
1984 – Vanessa Williams, the first African-American Miss America, was forced to resign after the magazine Penthouse published nude photos of her without consent.
2001 – Megawati Sukarnoputri (pictured) became the first female president of Indonesia after her predecessor Abdurrahman Wahid was removed from office.

Bridget of Sweden (d. 1373)
Louis T. Wright (b. 1891)
Amy Winehouse (d. 2011)

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From today's featured list

M. Night Shyamalan

Indian-American filmmaker and actor M. Night Shyamalan has directed fourteen feature-length narrative films to date. He rose to prominence after writing and directing The Sixth Sense in 1999, a film that earned him Academy Award nominations for Best Director and Best Original Screenplay. The filmmaker would later go on to write and direct Unbreakable (2000) in his second collaboration with actor Bruce Willis, which spawned two sequels, known as the Eastrail 177 Trilogy. In 2002 and 2004, respectively, Shyamalan created Signs and The Village, films that further established him as a filmmaker known for his original surprise endings. However, the negative reception of Lady in the Water (2006), The Happening (2008), The Last Airbender (2010), and After Earth (2013) earned him eight nominations at the Golden Raspberry Awards, with The Last Airbender being considered one of the worst films ever made. After the box office success of the horror film The Visit in 2015, which earned him the Razzie Redeemer Award, his latest project, Old, was released on July 23, 2021. (Full list...)

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Today's featured picture

Leptosia nina, known as the psyche, is a species of butterfly in the family Pieridae (the sulphurs, yellows and whites), found in the Indian subcontinent, southeastern Asia, and Australia. It has a small wingspan of 2.5 to 5 cm (1 to 2 in). The upper side of the otherwise white forewing has a large, somewhat pear-shaped, black spot; this spot is also present on the underside which is scattered with greenish dots and speckles, sometimes arranged in bands. This L. nina butterfly was photographed in Kerala, India.

Photograph credit: Jeevan Jose

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