Wikipedia:Main Page history/2018 October 12

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From today's featured article

Cortinarius caperatus, the gypsy mushroom, is an edible species found in northern regions of Europe and North America. It was known as Rozites caperata for many years, before genetic studies placed it in the large genus Cortinarius. The mushrooms appear in autumn in coniferous and beech woods, as well as heathlands in late summer and autumn. The ochre-coloured cap is up to 10 cm (4 in) across and has a fibrous surface. The clay-coloured gills are disjoint from the whitish stalk and ring under the cap. The flesh has a mild smell and flavour. Popular with mushroom foragers, C. caperatus is picked seasonally in many parts of Europe. Although highly regarded, the mushrooms are often infested with maggots. In central Europe, old specimens could be confused with the poisonous Inocybe erubescens in summer. Fruiting bodies of C. caperatus have been found to bioaccumulate mercury and radioactive isotopes of caesium. (Full article...)

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Did you know...

Madeleine Thompson

... that at the age of 13, Madeleine Thompson (pictured) was the youngest wheelchair basketball player ever to represent Great Britain?
... that Galán, one of the largest exposed calderas in the world, contains the Laguna Diamante lake, where life has to tolerate extreme environmental conditions?
... that Emil Mattiesen, a composer of lieder, chamber and organ music, also wrote books on parapsychology?
... that Miami University's Herron Gymnasium, listed on the National Register of Historic Places, was demolished and replaced with a parking lot?
... that American missionary Clarissa Chapman Armstrong led Bible study meetings for Queen Kalama in Hawaii while her husband served as Minister of Public Instruction under King Kamehameha III?
... that Großtarock, a card game played with a 78-card Tarot pack that originated in Germany and spread to the Netherlands and Scandinavia, has survived only in the Danish variant known as Tarok?
... that Henry Weston Farnsworth served in the French Foreign Legion and was one of the first American soldiers killed in World War I?
... that East Sutherland Gaelic has just one remaining native speaker?

In the news

Soyuz MS-10 launch

Shortly after launch (pictured) from Baikonur, Kazakhstan, Soyuz MS-10 suffers a booster failure, with both crew members surviving an emergency landing.
Hurricane Michael makes landfall in Florida, United States, as a Category 4 storm, killing 6 people after causing at least 13 deaths in Central America.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change releases a report on actions urgently needed to confine global warming to 1.5 °C (2.7 °F).

On this day

October 12: National Day in Spain (1492)

Illustration of French balloonist Jeanne Geneviève Labrosse

1398 – The Grand Duke of Lithuania Vytautas the Great and the Grand Master of the Teutonic Knights Konrad von Jungingen signed the Treaty of Salynas, the third attempt to cede Samogitia to the Knights.
1799 – Jeanne Geneviève Labrosse became the first woman to make a parachute descent (illustrated), falling 900 m (3,000 ft) in a hot-air balloon gondola.
1892 – The Pledge of Allegiance of the United States was first used in public schools to coincide with the opening of the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago.
1960 – Japan Socialist Party leader Inejiro Asanuma was assassinated on live television by a man using a samurai sword.
1984 – The Provisional Irish Republican Army detonated a bomb at the Grand Hotel in Brighton, England, in a failed attempt to assassinate British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and most of her cabinet.

Thomas Dudley (b. 1576) · Richard Molesworth, 3rd Viscount Molesworth (d. 1758) · Sheila Florance (d. 1991)

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From today's featured list

Máire Geoghegan-Quinn

Nineteen women have served as cabinet ministers in governments of the Republic of Ireland and its predecessors, the Irish Free State and the Irish Republic. The Government of Ireland is the cabinet that exercises executive authority in the Republic of Ireland. After a 58-year gap between the first and second women ministers, there has been at least one woman in all cabinets since December 1982. No woman has ever been Taoiseach (prime minister), but four women have served as Tánaiste (deputy prime minister). The 31st Government of Ireland was formed in June 2017. As of October 2018^[update] it includes four women as ministers in the cabinet of Taoiseach Leo Varadkar: Heather Humphreys, Katherine Zappone, Regina Doherty and Josepha Madigan. No more than four women have served simultaneously in any cabinet, and a 2014 pledge by the then-Taoiseach Enda Kenny to create a gender-balanced cabinet remains unfulfilled. (Full list...)

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Today's featured picture

Thomas Gainsborough (1727–1788) was an English painter. Along with his bitter rival, Sir Joshua Reynolds, he is considered one of the most important British portrait artists of the second half of the 18th century. Born and raised in Sudbury, Suffolk, Gainsborough lived in London during the 1740s, where he trained under engraver Hubert-François Gravelot and contributed to the decoration of Vauxhall Gardens. After marrying Margaret Burr, an illegitimate daughter of the Duke of Beaufort, Gainsborough moved back to Sudbury and then to Ipswich, Bath and London. Gainsborough was a fast painter and worked more from observations of nature than from application of formal academic rules. Despite being a prolific portrait painter, Gainsborough gained greater satisfaction from his landscapes.

This painting is a self-portrait of Gainsborough, painted shortly before he moved from Ipswich to Bath in 1759. It is now in the National Portrait Gallery in London.

Painting: Thomas Gainsborough

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