Wikipedia:Main Page history/2022 February 25b
From today's featured article J. R. R. Tolkien J. R. R. Tolkien drew on Beowulf when creating the fictional world he called Middle-earth for The Lord of the Rings. Tolkien (pictured), a fantasy author, linguist, and philologist, took many elements from the Old English poem Beowulf, including names, monsters, and heroic-age customs and beliefs. He emulated its style, creating an impression of depth and adopting an elegiac tone. Tolkien admired the way that the poem, written by a Christian looking back at a pagan past, used symbolism without becoming allegorical. The names of races, including ents, orcs, and elves, and placenames such as Orthanc and Meduseld, derive from Beowulf. The Riders of Rohan are distinctively Old English. The werebear Beorn in The Hobbit has been likened to the hero Beowulf himself; both names mean "bear" and both characters have enormous strength. Scholars have compared some of Tolkien's monsters, including Gollum, the trolls, and the dragon Smaug, to those in the poem. (Full article...)
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Did you know ... Milam Residence
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On this dayFebruary 25: Soviet Occupation Day in Georgia (1921); National Day in Kuwait (1961)  Edvard Beneš
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From today's featured list
The names of plant families are mainly derived from Latin or Greek words or from personal names, with the name of the original type genus defining the root of the family name. Since the first edition of Carl Linnaeus's Species Plantarum in 1753, plants have been assigned one epithet or name for their species and one name for their genus, a grouping of related species. These are in turn grouped into families, and all the plants in one family are more closely related to each other than to plants in any other family. Seed-bearing families are listed in Plants of the World by Maarten J. M. Christenhusz, Michael F. Fay and Mark W. Chase, and two updated families in Plants of the World Online. (Full list...)
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Christ's Entry Into Brussels in 1889 is an 1888 oil-on-canvas painting by the Belgian artist James Ensor. The work, satirising Jesus's triumphal entry into Jerusalem celebrated on Palm Sunday, is considered Ensor's most famous composition and a precursor to Expressionism. The picture is in the collection of the Getty Center in Los Angeles, California. Painting credit: James Ensor
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