Wikipedia:Main Page history/2015 July 7

From today's featured article

Ringo Starr (born 1940) is an English drummer, singer, songwriter, and actor best known as the drummer for the Beatles. As a child he was twice afflicted by life-threatening illnesses requiring prolonged hospitalisations. He cofounded his first band in 1957, the Eddie Clayton Skiffle Group, and then achieved moderate success with Rory Storm and the Hurricanes. He joined the Beatles in 1962, replacing Pete Best. He sang lead vocals for "With a Little Help from My Friends" and "Yellow Submarine". Starr played key roles in the Beatles' films and appeared in numerous others. After the band's break-up in 1970, he released "It Don't Come Easy", "Photograph" and "Back Off Boogaloo", followed by the 1973 top ten album Ringo. He narrated the first two seasons of the children's television series Thomas & Friends. Since 1989, he has successfully toured with twelve variations of Ringo Starr & His All-Starr Band. In 2011 Rolling Stone readers named Starr the fifth-greatest drummer of all time. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a Beatle in 1988 and for his solo career in 2015. (Full article...)

... that the intense lighting of The Wrestlers (pictured) highlights the curves, musculature, and sweat of the participants' naked bodies as they embrace and grapple?
... that President Rafael Correa ordered Ecuador's television stations to broadcast 233 cadenas nacionales in 2009?
... that the sequel to the Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket-Powered Battle-Cars video game is simply called Rocket League, an easier to remember title?
... that Spencer Wilson played Canadian football for the Calgary Stampeders as a left guard and left tackle before becoming the starting right guard?
... that Jules Verne's play Journey Through the Impossible, featuring Captain Nemo and other heroes from Verne's novels, was presumed lost until 1978?
... that Thomas Corbett, a Shaker doctor, developed an electrostatic medical device in 1810 as a "cure" for rheumatism?
... that the writer of the Star Trek: Voyager episode "Unity" based the episode on the destruction of the Tower of Babel?
... that Prince Nikolaus Esterházy, who commissioned Beethoven's Mass in C major for his wife's name day, found it "unbearably ridiculous and detestable"?

In association football, the Women's World Cup concludes with the United States defeating Japan in the final, and the Copa América concludes with Chile defeating Argentina in the final.
Nicholas Winton (pictured), dubbed the "British Schindler" for saving more than 600 children – the majority Jewish – from the Nazis, dies at the age of 106.
More than 140 people are killed when a Lockheed C-130 Hercules crashes into a residential area of Medan, Indonesia.
Hisham Barakat, Egypt's prosecutor general, is assassinated in a car bombing.

July 7: Tanabata in Japan; Independence Day in the Solomon Islands (1978)

1456 – Twenty-five years after her death, Joan of Arc was declared innocent of heresy in a posthumous retrial.
1834 – In New York City, four nights of rioting against abolitionists began, fueled by rumors that they were encouraging miscegenation.
1915 – Sinhalese army officer Henry Pedris was wrongly executed by British authorities for allegedly inciting race riots, hastening the Sri Lankan independence movement.
1994 – Troops from the former North Yemen captured Aden, ending the Yemeni civil war.
2005 – Suicide bombers killed 52 people in a series of four explosions on London's public transport system (emergency responders pictured).

The Portrait of Sebastián de Morra is an oil painting on canvas completed by the Spanish artist Diego Velázquez in c. 1645. It depicts Sebastián de Morra, a dwarf and court jester for Philip IV of Spain. He is shown sitting on the ground with his legs positioned inelegantly, which has been read as a denunciation of the court's treatment of him. The painting is now held at the Museo del Prado in Madrid.

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