Wikipedia:Main Page history/2021 November 22

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From today's featured article

F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Great Gatsby is a 1925 novel by American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald. Set in the Jazz Age on Long Island, near New York City, the novel depicts first-person narrator Nick Carraway's interactions with mysterious millionaire Jay Gatsby and Gatsby's obsession with his former lover, Daisy Buchanan. The book was inspired by a youthful romance Fitzgerald had with socialite Ginevra King, and the riotous parties he attended on Long Island's North Shore in 1922. The Great Gatsby received favorable reviews but was a commercial disappointment, selling fewer than 20,000 copies in the first six months. At the time of the author's death in 1940, he believed himself to be a failure and his work forgotten. During World War II, the novel surged in popularity when the Council on Books in Wartime distributed free copies to American soldiers serving overseas. This newfound popularity launched a critical re-examination, and now the book is widely considered to be a literary masterwork. (Full article...)

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Did you know ...

Money Musk

... that Thomas Jefferson and Henry Ford both took an interest in the folk tune and contra dance "Money Musk" (example pictured)?
... that the classic board game Jacquet was the benchmark for all tables games in France during the 19th century?
... that Charles Larson became one of the first Americans to teach African literature, after working in Nigeria for the Peace Corps to avoid the Vietnam draft?
... that the Filipino fraternity Alpha Phi Beta has been involved in instances of violence, including getting mauled by rival fraternities, such as Sigma Rho?
... that after he died in September 2021, John Boyden was revealed to have written under the pseudonym "Lunchtime O'Boulez"?
... that a short version of the Japanese stop motion film Junk Head was favorably reviewed by director Guillermo del Toro?
... that the sea slug Philinopsis depicta has no radula or jaws, and is thought to protrude its foregut and suck up its prey whole?
... that according to American sociologist Pauline Bart, "everything is data, but data isn't everything"?

In the news

Julien Ingrassia

In rallying, Sébastien Ogier and Julien Ingrassia (pictured) win the World Championship, and Toyota takes the manufacturers' title.
Abdalla Hamdok is reinstated as Prime Minister of Sudan in an agreement following the October coup.
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.

On this day

November 22: Feast day of Saint Cecilia (Christianity)

Blackbeard

1635 – Dutch colonial forces on Taiwan launched a three-month pacification campaign against the island's indigenous peoples.
1718 – The pirate Blackbeard (pictured) was killed in battle by a boarding party of British sailors off the coast of North Carolina.
1908 – The Congress of Manastir standardized the Albanian alphabet, a date commemorated as Alphabet Day in Albania, Kosovo and North Macedonia.
1928 – Boléro, French composer Maurice Ravel's most famous musical composition, premiered at the Paris Opéra.
1971 – In Britain's worst mountaineering tragedy, the Cairngorm Plateau disaster, five teenage students and one of their leaders were found dead from exposure in the Scottish Highlands.

Joseph Frederick Wallet DesBarres (b. 1721)
John Alsop (d. 1794)
Mick Shann (b. 1917)

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From today's featured list

Map of counties in Wyoming

There are 23 counties in the U.S. state of Wyoming. There were originally five counties in the Wyoming Territory: Laramie and Carter, established in 1867; Carbon and Albany, established in 1868; and Uinta, an annexed portion of Utah and Idaho, extending from Montana (including Yellowstone Park) to the Wyoming–Utah boundary. On July 10, 1890, Wyoming was admitted to the Union with thirteen counties in it. Ten more counties were created after statehood. Three counties were renamed after their creation: Carter County was renamed Sweetwater County on December 1, 1869; Hanover County existed for seven days in 1911 before it was renamed Washakie County; and Pease County, formed in 1875, was renamed Johnson County in 1879. (Full list...)

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Today's featured picture

Baby Huwae (22 November 1939 – 5 June 1989) was an Indonesian model, film actress and singer. Born in Rotterdam, Netherlands, she moved to Indonesia, where she took up modelling, by the 1950s. She entered the film industry in 1958, and gained popularity following the success of Asrama Dara. Over the next few years, Huwae acted in a further five films and established a girl group, the Baby Dolls, with several actresses who had appeared in her second film. She made a guest appearance in one more film in 1971 after a ten-year hiatus.

Photograph credit: Tati Photo Studio; restored by Chris Woodrich

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