Wikipedia:Main Page history/2021 November 20

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From today's featured article

The Harry F. Sinclair House stands at the corner of East 79th Street and Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, New York City. It was built between 1897 and 1899, designed in a French Renaissance style by C. P. H. Gilbert and built by foreman Harvey Murdock. It was successively owned by businessmen Isaac D. Fletcher and Harry F. Sinclair, and then descendants of Peter Stuyvesant. The Ukrainian Institute of America acquired the mansion in 1955. It fell into disrepair and was renovated in the 1990s. The house was added to the National Register of Historic Places and named a National Historic Landmark in 1978. The building largely retains its original design, being constructed mainly of brick faced with limestone ashlar. The northern façade on 79th Street includes the main entrance and has multiple windows in square recesses or Gothic arches. The western façade is symmetrical and dominated by a curved pavilion. The interior has six floors, with a total floorspace of 20,000 square feet (1,900 m²). (Full article...)

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Did you know ...

Belle Delphine demonstrating her ahegao face

... that Belle Delphine's online popularity surged after she mimicked the orgasm faces (example pictured) featured in some Japanese manga?
... that Pteronepelys is known as the "winged stranger"?
... that only four NBA players have been named to all four of the league's anniversary teams?
... that staff members of the Embassy of the Philippines to the Holy See would stack rosaries by the windows so they could be blessed by the Pope?
... that when the New Jersey–born military officer Samuel Gibbs French sided with the South in the U.S. Civil War, residents of Woodbury, New Jersey, hanged him in effigy and stormed his summer home?
... that while stealing Pablo Picasso's 1939 painting Woman's Head, the thief cut his hand and claimed to have wiped the blood on a 16th-century sketch that he flushed down the toilet?
... that the first train headlight was simply a bonfire on a train car pushed in front of a locomotive?
... that while The New York Times Building was designed to protect against terrorist attacks, planners did not consider that the façade could be climbed until several people scaled it?

In the news

SpaceX Crew-3 launch

Kosmos 1408 is destroyed by a Russian anti-satellite weapon and becomes a cloud of space debris.
We Continue the Change, led by Kiril Petkov and Asen Vasilev, wins the most seats in the Bulgarian general election.
SpaceX's Crew-3 mission (launch pictured) takes four astronauts to the International Space Station.
Former South African president F. W. de Klerk, who negotiated the end of apartheid with Nelson Mandela, dies at the age of 85.

On this day

November 20: Transgender Day of Remembrance; National Sovereignty Day in Argentina (1845)

Bust of Diocletian

284 – Diocletian (bust pictured) became Roman emperor, eventually establishing reforms that ended the Crisis of the Third Century.
1739 – War of Jenkins' Ear: A British naval force arrived at the settlement of Portobello in the Spanish Main (now in Panama), which it captured the next day.
1902 – While discussing how to promote the newspaper L'Auto, sports journalist Géo Lefèvre came up with the idea of holding a cycling race that later became known as the Tour de France.
1979 – A group of armed insurgents attacked and took over the Masjid al-Haram in Mecca, declaring that one of their leaders was the Mahdi, the prophesied redeemer of Islam.
1991 – First Nagorno-Karabakh War: An Azerbaijani military helicopter carrying a peacekeeping mission team was shot down in Nagorno-Karabakh, Azerbaijan, disrupting the ongoing peace talks.

Thomas Chatterton (b. 1752)
Irakli Tsereteli (b. 1881)
Ancel Keys (d. 2004)

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Today's featured picture

The ruddy turnstone (Arenaria interpres) is a small wading bird in the sandpiper family, Scolopacidae. It is a highly migratory bird, breeding in northern parts of Eurasia and North America and flying south to winter on coastlines almost worldwide. This adult ruddy turnstone in non-breeding plumage was photographed at Boat Harbour in New South Wales, Australia.

Photograph credit: John Harrison

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