Wikipedia:Main Page history/2018 September 17

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From today's featured article

Bombardier Q400 NextGen, flown by WestJet Encore

WestJet Encore is a Canadian regional airline that began operations in 2013 as a subsidiary of WestJet Airlines, Ltd., the holding company for WestJet Airlines. It is headquartered in Calgary, Alberta. Originally limited to Western Canada, air service was later supplemented by routes in the eastern half of the country. Pilot bases are in Calgary and Toronto, where many WestJet Encore flights operate. Because WestJet Airlines operates only larger aircraft such as the Boeing 737, the company could not profitably serve many routes with less traffic. WestJet Encore was created to use smaller planes, allowing the company to serve these routes and to increase the frequency of flights on other routes. The airline is the fourth largest operator of the Bombardier Q400 NextGen aircraft (pictured), a variant of the Bombardier Dash 8. The airline was initially staffed with non-union employees but the pilots have since unionized. (Full article...)

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Did you know...

Brown-hooded kingfisher

... that the brown-hooded kingfisher (pictured), about 22 centimetres (8.7 in) long, has been recorded eating reptiles as long as 25 centimetres (9.8 in)?
... that basketball player Trey Kell signed with the Bosnian team Igokea over nine other European offers?
... that "Wenn ich, o Schöpfer, deine Macht", part of German Protestant and Catholic hymnals, began as a poem by Christian Fürchtegott Gellert from the Age of Enlightenment?
... that Kaʻiminaʻauao, a younger sibling of Hawaii's Queen Liliʻuokalani, died in an epidemic that killed more than 10,000 people, mostly Native Hawaiians?
... that Niel Gow, a Scottish fiddler, is said to have composed many of his best-known tunes under a tree on the banks of the River Tay?
... that in 1381, during the Peasants' Revolt, John Fresshe—later to be Lord Mayor of London—was widely suspected of encouraging the mob to burn down the Marshalsea Prison?
... that the United States government purchased John Lennon's boyhood stamp album for the National Philatelic Collection?
... that Bob Wood, co-creator of the comic Crime Does Not Pay, served three years in prison for manslaughter, and was murdered a year after his release?

In the news

Typhoon Mangkhut

Kenyan Eliud Kipchoge sets a new world record at the Berlin Marathon.
Typhoon Mangkhut (pictured) impacts the Philippines, Taiwan, Hong Kong and China, resulting in more than 60 fatalities.
Hurricane Florence makes landfall in North Carolina, United States, causing the deaths of at least 15 people.
Jocelyn Bell Burnell, who co-discovered pulsars but was omitted from the related Nobel Prize, receives the Special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics.
Brazilian presidential candidate Jair Bolsonaro is stabbed during a campaign rally.

On this day

September 17: Constitution Day in the United States

Emperor Norton

1176 – Byzantine–Seljuq wars: The Seljuq Turks prevented the Byzantines from taking the interior of Anatolia at the Battle of Myriokephalon in Phrygia.
1775 – American Revolutionary War: The Continental Army under Richard Montgomery began the Siege of Fort St. Jean in the British province of Quebec.
1859 – Disgruntled with the legal and political structures of the United States, Joshua Norton (pictured) distributed letters to various newspapers in San Francisco, proclaiming himself Emperor Norton.
1914 – Andrew Fisher, whose previous term as Prime Minister of Australia oversaw a period of reform unmatched in the Commonwealth until the 1940s, became Prime Minister for the third time.
1980 – Solidarity, a Polish trade union, was founded as the first independent labor union in a Soviet-bloc country.

Stephen Hales (b. 1677) · Jonathan Alder (b. 1773) · Henri Julien (d. 1908)

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From today's featured list

Pope Leo XI

Sixty members of the College of Cardinals were present at the start of the papal conclave of March 1605, and sixty-one total electors were present for the election of Alessandro Ottaviano de' Medici as Pope Leo XI on 1 April 1605. The papal conclave of March 1605 was convened on the death of Pope Clement VIII. It was the first of two papal conclaves in 1605, with Leo dying on 27 April 1605, twenty-six days after he was elected, and the conclave to elect his successor being held in May. The conclave saw conflict regarding whether Cesare Baronius should be elected pope, and Philip III of Spain, the Spanish king, excluded both Baronius and the eventually successful candidate, Medici. Philip's exclusion of Medici was announced by Cardinal Ávila after his election to the papacy, and the other cardinals did not view it as valid since Medici had already been elected pope. The electors present had been created by six different popes: Pius IV, Gregory XIII, Sixtus V, Gregory XIV, Innocent IX, and Clement VIII. Of these, Clement's creations were the most numerous, having created thirty-eight of the cardinal electors. (Full list...)

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Today's featured picture

Portrait of Dr. Gachet refers to two portraits painted by Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh in 1890, depicting the homeopathic doctor and artist Paul Gachet. Van Gogh was staying with Gachet on the recommendation of his friend Camille Pissarro, having spent a year in a mental asylum following a breakdown. He produced more than seventy paintings during his time with Gachet, including the portraits of his host. The paintings show Gachet with a melancholy face, which Van Gogh described as "the heartbroken expression of our time", seated next to some foxgloves. The portraits of Dr. Gachet were completed just six weeks before Van Gogh shot himself and died from his wounds. The first version of the portrait sold for $82.5 million in 1990, making it at the time the most expensive painting in history. The second version, pictured here, hangs in the Musée d'Orsay in Paris, France.

Painting: Vincent van Gogh

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