Wikipedia:Today's featured list/September 2021
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September 3
The Moortidevi Award is an Indian literary award annually presented by the Bharatiya Jnanpith, a literary and research organisation. The award is given only to Indian writers writing in Indian languages included in the Eighth Schedule to the Constitution of India, and in English, with no posthumous conferral or self nomination. From 2003, the award was given to the authors for their "contemplative and perceptive work" and consisted of a cash prize of ₹1 lakh (US$1,600), a citation plaque, a shawl, and a statue of Saraswati, the Hindu goddess of knowledge and wisdom. The cash prize was raised to ₹2 lakh (US$2,800) in 2011 and to ₹4 lakh (US$5,600) in 2013. The first recipient of the award was the Kannada writer C. K. Nagaraja Rao (pictured), who was honoured in 1983 for his novel, Pattamahadevi Shantala Devi, which was published in four volumes. The award has been conferred upon twenty-nine writers including one female author: In 1991, Odia academic and writer Pratibha Ray became the first woman to win the award and was honoured for the 1985 novel Yajnasani. Hindi writer and professor Vishwanath Tiwari is the most recent recipient of the award. (Full list...)
September 6
Spaceflight as a practical endeavor began during World War II with the development of operational liquid-fueled rockets. Beginning life as a weapon, the V-2 (example pictured) was impressed into peaceful service after the war at the United States' White Sands Missile Range as well as the Soviet Union's Kapustin Yar. This led to a flourishing of missile designs setting the stage for the exploration of space. The small American WAC Corporal rocket was evolved into the Aerobee, a much more powerful sounding rocket. Exploration of space began in earnest in 1947 with the flight of the first Aerobee, 46 of which had flown by the end of 1950. These and other rockets, both Soviet and American, returned the first direct data on air density, temperature, charged particles and magnetic fields in the Earth's upper atmosphere. (Full list...)
September 10
The discography of American Football, an American rock and emo band, comprises three studio albums, two extended plays (EP), four singles and eight music videos. Because all three albums are eponymous, they are known as LP1, LP2, and LP3. The band was formed in 1997 in Urbana, Illinois, by Mike Kinsella, Steve Lamos, and Steve Holmes while they were students at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. A year later, they released a self-titled EP, followed by their debut studio album, American Football (LP1), in 1999. LP1's music and enigmatic cover art, which shows a green tinted picture of a white house in Urbana, developed a word-of-mouth cult following, and is considered a central influence on the 2010s emo revival. In 2016, they released their sophomore album, American Football (LP2), which reached number 82 on the Billboard 200 and number 3 on the Independent Albums chart. They followed up with American Football (LP3), and an extended play of early demos, Year One Demos, in 2019. (Full list...)
September 13
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The Human Development Index of 189 countries is compiled by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in the annual Human Development Report. The index considers the health, education and income in a given country to provide a measure of human development which is comparable between countries and over time. The Human Development Index (HDI) was first published in 1990 with the goal of being a more comprehensive measure of human development than purely economic measures such as gross domestic product. The index incorporates three dimensions of human development: a long and healthy life, knowledge, and decent living standards. Various indicators are used to quantify how countries perform on each dimension. The indicators are used to create a health index, an education index and an income index each with a value between 0 and 1 which are combined to create the HDI. The data used to calculate HDI comes mostly from United Nations agencies and international institutions. The HDI is the most widely used indicator of human development and changed how people view the concept. (Full list...)
September 17
Eighty-six nations received at least one medal at the 2012 Summer Olympics, and 55 of them won at least one gold medal. The 2012 Summer Olympics, officially were a summer multi-sport event held in London, the capital of the United Kingdom, from 27 July to 12 August. A total of 10,768 athletes from 204 nations participated in 302 events in 26 sports across 39 different disciplines. Athletes from the United States won the most medals overall with 104 and the most gold medals with 46. The latter record was the largest gold medal haul for that country at a non-US hosted Olympics at the time. Host nation Great Britain won 29 gold medals and 65 overall medals making it the most successful Olympics performance for that nation since the 1908 edition. Michael Phelps and Missy Franklin won the most gold medals at the games with four each. Phelps also won the greatest number of medals overall winning six in total. Bahrain, Botswana, Cyprus, Gabon, Grenada, Guatemala, and Montenegro all won their first Olympic medals with Bahrain and Grenada winning their nation's first Olympic gold medal. (Full list...)
September 20
Arkansas has participated in 46 United States presidential elections since the state's admission to the Union in June 1836. In the realigning 1860 presidential election, Arkansas was one of the ten slave states that did not provide ballot access to the Republican nominee Abraham Lincoln. Subsequently, John C. Breckinridge won the state by a comfortable margin, becoming the first third party candidate to win Arkansas. Soon after this election, Arkansas seceded from the Union and joined the Confederacy. Following the secession, it did not participate in the 1864 presidential election. After the Civil War, Arkansas was readmitted to the Union in 1868. In the 1872 presidential election, all six of Arkansas's electoral votes were invalidated due to various irregularities including allegations of electoral fraud. Until 1964, Arkansas was considered a stronghold state for the Democratic Party, as it consistently won Arkansas by huge margins; however, recent political realignment led to the dominance of the Republican Party. In the 1968 presidential election, American Independent Party candidate George Wallace became the second third-party presidential candidate to win Arkansas. The Republican Party has won Arkansas in ten of the last fourteen elections. (Full list...)
September 24
The 2002 Indian Hindi-language epic romantic drama film Devdas won 61 awards from 91 nominations. The film was directed by Sanjay Leela Bhansali and stars Shah Rukh Khan, Aishwarya Rai Bachchan (both pictured) and Madhuri Dixit, while Kirron Kher, Smita Jaykar and Vijayendra Ghatge play supporting roles. The film's story focuses on Devdas (Khan), a Bachelor of Law student who later becomes an alcoholic after his family rejects his relationship with Paro (Rai Bachchan), Devdas' childhood friend. Devdas received a nomination for the Best Film Not in the English Language from the 56th British Academy Film Awards. At the 50th National Film Awards, it won five trophies, including Best Popular Film Providing Wholesome Entertainment. The film won eleven awards at the 48th Filmfare Awards, including Best Film, Best Director (Bhansali), Best Actor (Khan), Best Actress (Rai Bachchan) and Best Supporting Actress (Dixit). (Full list...)
September 27
There are 41 active Broadway theaters listed by The Broadway League in New York City, as well as 9 existing structures that previously hosted Broadway theatre. Beginning with the first large long-term theater in the city, the Park Theatre built in 1798 on Park Row just off Broadway, the definition of what constitutes a Broadway theater has changed multiple times. The current legal definition is based on a 1949 Actors' Equity agreement with smaller theaters in New York to allow union members to perform, dividing theater spaces in the city into the system of Broadway and Off-Broadway seen today. Current union contracts clearly spell out if a production is "Broadway" or not, but the general rule is that any venue that mostly hosts legitimate theater productions, is generally within Manhattan's Theater District, and has a capacity over 500 seats is considered a Broadway theater. Previous to this legal demarcation a Broadway production simply referred to a professional theatrical production performed in a theater in Manhattan, and the theaters that housed them were called Broadway theaters. (Full list...)