Wikipedia:Main Page history/2019 December 21

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From today's featured article

Preity Zinta

Kal Ho Naa Ho (Tomorrow May Never Come) is a 2003 Indian romantic comedy-drama film directed by Nikkhil Advani, starring Jaya Bachchan, Shah Rukh Khan, Saif Ali Khan, and Preity Zinta (pictured). It tells the story of Naina Catherine Kapur (Zinta), a pessimistic and uptight business administration student. She falls in love with her neighbour Aman Mathur (Shah Rukh Khan), a terminally ill patient who fears she will grieve for him if he reciprocates her feelings. The film was written by Karan Johar, who co-produced it with his father Yash Johar under their Dharma Productions banner. The film received positive critical feedback, and was the highest-grossing Indian film of the year. Its themes include inter-caste marriage, terminal illness, and the depiction of non-resident Indians. It won two National Film Awards, eight Filmfare Awards, thirteen International Indian Film Academy Awards, six Producers Guild Film Awards, three Screen Awards, and two Zee Cine Awards. (Full article...)

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Did you know ...

Sun Yang

... that Sun Yang (pictured) is the first swimmer in history to win Olympic gold medals in the 200-, 400-, and 1500-metre freestyle events?
... that when lead miners discovered Dream Cave in Derbyshire in 1822, they found it to contain the near-complete skeleton of a woolly rhinoceros?
... that U.S. Department of Defense civil servant Laura Cooper has noted that she has frequently been the "only woman in the room" for much of her career?
... that the 1766 Istanbul earthquake claimed 4,000 victims, 880 of them in the city?
... that Wilhelm Keitel was promoted to Chief of the Armed Forces High Command because of his craven willingness to function as Adolf Hitler's mouthpiece?
... that Clairo drew inspiration for her songs "Sofia" and "Bags" from her crushes on women?
... that Shiza Shahid and Malala Yousafzai co-founded the Malala Fund in 2013 to promote education for every girl?
... that Intelligence Community Campus-Bethesda buildings in Maryland were originally built without windows to conceal the classified work going on inside?

In the news

Donald Trump

United States president Donald Trump (pictured) is impeached by the House of Representatives on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.
Former Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf is sentenced to death in absentia for treason and subverting the constitution.
In India, at least six people are killed and many others are arrested in protests against a law on citizenship for migrants.
The Conservatives, led by Boris Johnson, win a majority of seats in the UK general election.

On this day

December 21

Emma Goldman

1124 – Lamberto Scannabecchi was elected pope, taking the name Honorius II.
1844 – The Rochdale Pioneers opened their store in Rochdale, England, forming the basis for the modern co-operative movement.
1919 – After serving two years in prison for encouraging people to resist military conscription, anarchist Emma Goldman (pictured) was deported from the United States to Russia.
1963 – An attempt by Greek Cypriot police to search certain Turkish Cypriot women in Nicosia escalated into island-wide violence, leading to 538 deaths and the displacement of nearly 27,000 people.
1995 – In accordance with the Oslo II Accord, Israeli troops withdrew from the city of Bethlehem in preparation for the transfer of its control to the Palestinian National Authority.

Sun Sheng (d. 956) · Joseph Carruthers (b. 1857) · Henry Reuterdahl (d. 1925)

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Today's featured picture

A black hole is a region of spacetime exhibiting gravitational acceleration so strong that nothing – no particles or even electromagnetic radiation such as light – can escape from it. The theory of general relativity predicts that a sufficiently compact mass can deform spacetime to form a black hole. The boundary of the region from which no escape is possible is called the event horizon. Although the event horizon has an enormous effect on the fate and circumstances of an object crossing it, no locally detectable features appear to be observed.

This picture is a photograph of the shadow of the supermassive black hole at the centre of the Messier 87 (M87) elliptical galaxy in the constellation Virgo, as captured on 11 April 2017 by the Event Horizon Telescope, a planet-scale array of eight ground-based radio telescopes, a collaborative effort by scientists from over 20 countries; the photograph itself was released on 10 April 2019. As a black hole is a completely dark object from which no light escapes, its shadow is the next best alternative to an image of the black hole itself. The event horizon, from which the telescope takes its name, is around 2.5 times smaller than the shadow it casts and measures just under 40 billion kilometres (25 billion miles) across.

Photograph credit: Event Horizon Telescope

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