Wikipedia:Main Page history/2015 November 12

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From today's featured article

Harris's List of Covent Garden Ladies, published from 1757 to 1795, was an annual directory of prostitutes working in and around Covent Garden, London. It sold for two shillings and sixpence, and in 1791 had an estimated circulation of around 8,000 copies. Each edition contains entries describing the physical appearance and sexual specialities of about 120–190 prostitutes, in sometimes lurid detail. While most entries compliment their subjects, some are critical of bad habits, and a few women are even treated as pariahs, perhaps having fallen out of favour with the lists' authors, who are never revealed. Samuel Derrick is normally credited for originating Harris's List, which may have been named after a Covent Garden pimp, Jack Harris. A Grub Street hack, Derrick may have written the lists from 1757 until his death in 1769; thereafter, the annual's authors are unknown. As the public's opinion began to turn against London's sex trade, and with reformers petitioning the authorities to take action, those involved in the release of Harris's List were in 1795 fined and imprisoned. Modern writers tend to view Harris's List as erotica. (Full article...)

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In the news

Helmut Schmidt

Former West German chancellor Helmut Schmidt (pictured) dies at the age of 96.
In motorsport, Jorge Lorenzo wins the MotoGP World Championship.
Chinese and Taiwanese presidents, Xi Jinping and Ma Ying-jeou, formally meet for the first time.
At least 41 people are killed when an Antonov An-12 cargo plane crashes near Juba, South Sudan.
Romanian Prime Minister Victor Ponta resigns over the fatal Colectiv nightclub fire.

Ongoing events:
- Metrojet Flight 9268
- European migrant crisis
Recent deaths:
- Pat Eddery

On this day...

November 12: New Year's Day in the Nepal Sambat calendar (2015)

Zoe Porphyrogenita

1028 – Future Byzantine empress Zoe (pictured) first took the throne as empress consort to Romanos III Argyros.
1893 – Mortimer Durand, Foreign Secretary of British India, and Abdur Rahman Khan, Amir of Afghanistan, signed the Durand Line Agreement, establishing what is now the international border between Afghanistan and Pakistan.
1940 – Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov arrived in Berlin to discuss the possibility of the Soviet Union joining the Axis Powers.
1945 – Sudirman was elected the first commander-in-chief of the Indonesian Armed Forces.
1970 – The Oregon Highway Division unsuccessfully attempted to destroy a rotting beached sperm whale near Florence, Oregon, with explosives.

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An aerial view of Klara Church, a Protestant church located in Stockholm. The current church building was constructed in the 16th century, with the tower added during a restoration in the 1880s.

Photograph: Arild Vågen

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