Wikipedia:Main Page history/2018 July 2

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From today's featured article

The Monroe Doctrine Centennial half dollar was an American fifty-cent piece struck at the San Francisco Mint in 1923, bearing portraits of former presidents James Monroe and John Quincy Adams. Sculptor Chester Beach is credited with the design, although the reverse closely resembles an earlier work by Raphael Beck. The commemorative coin was issued to raise funds for an exposition in Los Angeles honoring the 100th anniversary of the Monroe Doctrine; the event was organized in part to generate good press for Hollywood during a time of highly publicized scandals, including manslaughter charges against film star Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle. The exposition was a financial failure. The coins did not sell well, and the bulk of the mintage of over 270,000 was released into circulation. Many of the pieces that had been sold at a premium and saved were spent during the Depression; most surviving coins show evidence of wear. (Full article...)

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Did you know...

Tacora

... that Tacora (pictured), Chile's northernmost volcano, was the site of substantial sulfur mining operations that were explicitly given to Chile in a 1929 treaty with Peru?
... that Danish dermatologist Carl Rasch coined the term "polymorphic light eruption"?
... that Amazon responded to the proposed Seattle head tax by threatening to halt development of a downtown office tower?
... that Carmen Casco de Lara Castro, founder of one of the first human rights organizations in Latin America, was arrested, denied a passport, and monitored by the Stroessner regime?
... that Iceland has the highest number of writers, books published, and books read per capita?
... that Ofir Ben Shitrit was suspended from her religious girls' high school after singing on The Voice Israel?
... that with an area of 2,772 acres (1,122 ha), Pelham Bay Park is the largest public park in New York City?
... that Q performed "Wikipedia"?

In the news

Lake Toba

The Japanese sample-return spacecraft Hayabusa2 arrives at the asteroid 162173 Ryugu.
Saudi Arabia lifts its ban on women driving.
Canada legalizes the recreational use of cannabis with effect from October 2018, making it the second country to do so.
An overloaded tourist ferry capsizes in Lake Toba (pictured), Indonesia, killing at least three people and leaving 164 others missing.
In golf, Brooks Koepka wins the U.S. Open at the Shinnecock Hills Golf Club.

On this day

July 2

Kinkaku-ji, Kyoto, Japan

706 – In China, Emperor Zhongzong of Tang interred the final bodies in the Qianling Mausoleum, which remained unopened until the 1960s.
1881 – U.S. President James A. Garfield was fatally shot at the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad station in Washington, D.C.
1900 – Finlandia, a tone poem by Jean Sibelius which forms the basis of one of the national songs of Finland, was first performed in Helsinki.
1950 – A mentally ill Buddhist monk set fire to the Golden Pavilion at Kinkaku-ji (restoration pictured), destroying what is now one of the most popular tourist destinations in Japan.
2013 – The International Astronomical Union announced that the fourth and fifth moons of Pluto would be named Kerberos and Styx respectively.

Denmark Vesey (d. 1822) · Harriet Brooks (b. 1876) · Ernest Hemingway (d. 1961)

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From today's featured list

P. G. Wodehouse

The English author, humorist and scriptwriter P. G. Wodehouse created several regular comic characters with whom the public became familiar. These include Bertie Wooster and his valet Jeeves; the immaculate and loquacious Psmith; Lord Emsworth and the Blandings Castle set; the disaster-prone opportunist Ukridge; the Oldest Member, with stories about golf; and Mr Mulliner, with tales on numerous subjects from film studios to the Church of England. Wodehouse also wrote scripts and screenplays and, in August 1911, his script A Gentleman of Leisure was produced on the Broadway stage. In the 1920s and 1930s he collaborated with Jerome Kern and Guy Bolton in an arrangement that "helped transform the American musical" of the time. His writing for plays also turned into scriptwriting, starting with the 1915 film A Gentleman of Leisure. He joined Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) in 1930 for a year, and then worked for RKO Pictures in 1937. (Full list...)

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Christoph Willibald Gluck (1714–1787) was a composer of Italian and French opera in the early classical period. Rising to prominence at the Habsburg court in Vienna, he challenged the dominant Metastasian opera seria by introducing more drama and cutting the da capo aria with a series of works in the 1760s, among them Orfeo ed Euridice and Alceste. After moving to Paris in 1773, he fused the Italian and French traditions in eight operas. Of these, Iphigénie en Tauride is generally acknowledged as his finest work.

Painting: Joseph Siffred Duplessis

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