Wikipedia:Main Page history/2021 March 15

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From today's featured article

Seal of the Catalan Company

The Battle of Halmyros was fought on 15 March 1311 between the Frankish Duchy of Athens and the Catalan Company (seal depicted). The Catalans were mercenaries hired by the Byzantine emperor to combat the increasing power of the Turks in Anatolia. After the Byzantines murdered the Catalan leader, Roger de Flor, the company crossed the southern Balkans and arrived in southern Greece in 1309. The new Duke of Athens, Walter of Brienne, hired them to attack Thessaly. The Catalans conquered much of the region, but Walter refused to pay them and prepared to forcibly expel them. The two armies met at Halmyros in southern Thessaly. The Catalans positioned themselves behind marshy terrain, but the Franks, confident in the prowess of their heavy cavalry, charged headlong against the Catalan line. The marsh impeded their attack, and the Frankish army was routed. Walter and almost all of his knights fell in the field, allowing the Catalans to take over the Duchy of Athens and rule it until the 1380s. (Full article...)

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Did you know ...

Irena Solska by Leon Wyczółkowski (1899)

... that during the German occupation of Poland, the Polish dramatic actress Irena Solska (pictured) worked with Żegota and helped to hide and rescue Jews?
... that the whaleback barge 104 was the first ship of its kind to be lost on the Great Lakes?
... that the March of the Indonesian National Armed Forces was adopted after the previous march fell into disuse following mocking and parodying by activists?
... that American financial executive Robert Glauber could watch an opera "infinite times"?
... that in Epidemiology in Relation to Air Travel (1933), Arthur Massey showed how air passengers could spread infectious diseases between countries before they showed any symptoms?
... that while at Fiorentina, Mohamed Salah chose the shirt number 74 in honour of the victims of the Port Said Stadium riot?
... that the US government once mailed rural school districts scale models from which carpenters could construct actual two-room schools?
... that Kids See Ghosts and Ty Dolla Sign were sued for allegedly sampling "The Spirit of Marcus Garvey (Garvey speaks to an all-Black audience)" in their song "Freeee (Ghost Town, Pt. 2)"?

In the news

Taylor Swift

Folklore by Taylor Swift (pictured) wins Album of the Year and Billie Eilish's Everything I Wanted wins Record of the Year at the Grammy Awards.
A data breach of Microsoft Exchange Server affects an estimated 250,000 servers globally.
A series of explosions in Bata, Equatorial Guinea, leaves at least 108 people dead and more than 600 others injured.
In Zamfara, Nigeria, 279 girls who had been kidnapped from a secondary school by armed bandits are released.

On this day

March 15: Ides of March

Detail from The Death of Julius Caesar by Vincenzo Camuccini

44 BC – Julius Caesar, the dictator of the Roman Republic, was stabbed to death (depicted) by a group of senators led by Marcus Junius Brutus.
1783 – George Washington delivered a speech to Continental Army officers in Newburgh, New York, asking them to support the supremacy of the Congress of the Confederation, defusing a potential coup.
1927 – In rowing, Oxford defeated Cambridge in the inaugural edition of the Women's Boat Race.
1951 – The Iranian oil industry was nationalized in a movement led by Mohammad Mosaddegh.
2019 – A lone gunman carried out two consecutive mass shootings during Friday prayers at mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, resulting in 51 deaths.

Ernulf (d. 1124)
Eusebio Kino (d. 1711)
Robin Hunicke (b. 1973)

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Billie Eilish

American singer and songwriter Billie Eilish has released one studio album, three extended plays and one live album. In November 2015, at the age of 13, Eilish uploaded "Ocean Eyes" to SoundCloud, which would become an instant hit, and lead to her being signed to Darkroom and Interscope Records the following year. Her debut studio album, When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?, was issued in March 2019, and featured the globally successful and her first Billboard Hot 100 number-one single "Bad Guy", for which a remix with Justin Bieber was eventually released. Further singles to aid the record included "You Should See Me in a Crown", "When the Party's Over", "Bury a Friend" and "Wish You Were Gay". From late 2019 to early 2021, Eilish released several commercially successful singles—"Everything I Wanted", "No Time to Die", "My Future", "Therefore I Am" and "Lo Vas a Olvidar"—with the latter being a collaboration with Rosalía for the television series Euphoria. (Full list...)

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Andrew Jackson (March 15, 1767 – June 8, 1845) was an American soldier and statesman who served as the seventh president of the United States from 1829 to 1837. He has been widely revered in the United States as an advocate for democracy and the common man, but many of his actions proved divisive, garnering both fervent support and strong opposition from different sectors of society. His reputation has suffered since the 1970s, largely due to his pivotal role in the forcible removal of Native Americans from their ancestral homelands; however, surveys of historians and scholars have ranked Jackson favorably among U.S. presidents.

Engraving credit: Bureau of Engraving and Printing; restored by Andrew Shiva

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