Wikipedia:Main Page history/2019 August 18

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From today's featured article

Trafford Park's southern entrance

Trafford Park is an area of the Metropolitan Borough of Trafford, Greater Manchester, England, opposite Salford Quays on the southern side of the Manchester Ship Canal, 3.4 miles (5.5 km) southwest of Manchester city centre. Until the late 19th century, it was the ancestral home of the Trafford family, who sold it to financier Ernest Terah Hooley in 1896. It was the first planned industrial estate in the world and remains the largest in Europe, at 4.7 square miles (12 km²). Trafford Park was a major supplier of materiel in the First and Second World Wars, producing the Rolls-Royce Merlin engines used to power both the Spitfire and the Lancaster. At its peak in 1945, an estimated 75,000 workers were employed in the park. Employment began to decline in the 1960s as companies closed in favour of newer, more efficient plants elsewhere. The new Manchester Metrolink line from Pomona to the Trafford Centre is under construction. (Full article...)

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Did you know...

Christopher Nolan

... that Christopher Nolan (pictured) wrote and directed a no-budget film titled Doodlebug as a student at University College London?
... that Welsh international footballer Peyton Vincze discovered she was eligible to represent the nation only when a Welsh football club visited her town in the United States?
... that the large leaves of Marantochloa purpurea are used for wrapping cola nuts to prevent them from becoming desiccated?
... that after William Tarrant was sacked from the civil service of British Hong Kong, he became a journalist and ran a 12-year-long vendetta that led to his imprisonment?
... that according to the U.S. Supreme Court, Medicare payment levels count as "substantive legal standards"?
... that the baritone Ernst Gerold Schramm was the voice of Christ for Karl Richter in Bach's St John Passion and St Matthew Passion?
... that in 1982, Brooks Resources, originally a subsidiary of the Brooks-Scanlon Lumber Company, donated 135 acres (55 ha) to help Donald Kerr establish the High Desert Museum near Bend, Oregon?
... that Sylvia Stoesser was called the "nasal chemist" because she could often identify the ingredients in an unknown laboratory mixture by smelling it?

In the news

Ural Airlines Airbus A321 in 2013

All 233 people on board Ural Airlines Flight 178 (aircraft pictured) survive a crash following bird strikes in both engines of an Airbus A321.
Typhoon Lekima impacts the Philippines, the Ryukyu Islands, Taiwan and East China, killing at least 80 people.
At least 75 people are killed and more than 50 others injured in a fuel tanker truck explosion in Morogoro, Tanzania.

On this day

August 18

Phobos

684 – Second Fitna: Umayyad partisans defeated the supporters of Ibn al-Zubayr and cemented Umayyad control of Syria.
1612 – The trial of the Pendle and Samlesbury witches, among the most famous of England's witch trials, began at the assizes in Lancaster.
1877 – American astronomer Asaph Hall discovered Phobos (pictured), the larger of Mars's two moons, six days after discovering Deimos, the smaller one.
1964 – Hildegard Trabant was killed while attempting to cross the Berlin Wall, making her the only person known to have been loyal to East Germany who was killed at the wall.
1989 – Leading Colombian presidential candidate Luis Carlos Galán was assassinated during a public demonstration in the town of Soacha, Cundinamarca.

Agneta Horn (b. 1629) · Maria Ulfah Santoso (b. 1911) · Edward Norton (b. 1969)

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Today's featured picture

Gabrielle Cot is an oil-on-canvas painting by William-Adolphe Bouguereau, produced in 1890. The eponymous subject is the daughter of the French painter Pierre Auguste Cot, who was Bouguereau's most notable pupil. He started the work as a study for another painting but decided to develop it into a full work after becoming enthralled by Gabrielle Cot's charm and beauty. It was the only non-commissioned painting he ever painted. Bouguereau gifted the painting to Gabrielle Cot's grandmother, Madame Duret, and it has been privately held since then. It was exhibited to the public in Paris in 1891 and in New York in 1999.

Painting credit: William-Adolphe Bouguereau

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