Wikipedia:Main Page history/2019 December 9

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From today's featured article

File:Stabni.Kapitan.Emanuel.Moravec.(1893-1945).Tablo.Valecna.Skola.1922-1923.gif

Emanuel Moravec (1893–1945) was a Czech army officer and writer who collaborated with Nazi Germany as the minister of education of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia between 1942 and 1945. He was also chair of the Board of Trustees for the Education of Youth, a fascist youth organisation in the protectorate. In World War I, Moravec served in the Austro-Hungarian Army, but following capture by the Russians he changed sides, first joining Russian-backed Serbian forces and then the Czechoslovak Legion. During the interwar period he commanded an infantry battalion in the Czechoslovak Army. As a proponent of democracy during the 1930s, Moravec appealed for armed action against Germany and scorned German demands for the Sudetenland, but after their occupation of the rump Czechoslovakia, he became an enthusiastic collaborator, realigning his political worldview towards fascism. He killed himself in the final days of World War II. (Full article...)

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Did you know ...

Bodega cat in Brooklyn, New York

... that bodega cats (example pictured) are used as a form of pest control in New York City?
... that German painter Gebhard Fugel led the team creating the monumental Crucifixion Panorama in Altötting, which became a UNESCO-listed monument?
... that Sarazanmai was conceived as an anime series about supernatural monsters for an adult audience?
... that Russian vice admiral Mikhail Motsak, who oversaw the salvage of the wreck of the submarine Kursk, is buried in the same cemetery as a number of the crew who died aboard the vessel?
... that the 2001 BDO World Darts Championship featured an independent women's tournament for the first time in the competition's history?
... that in 2018, Maëlle became the first female and youngest contestant ever to win the French version of The Voice?
... that the Seven Wonders of the Waterways include the UK's longest and highest aqueduct, its longest, deepest, and highest canal tunnel, and the world's only swinging aqueduct?
... that later in life, Jo Walker-Meador would be inducted into the hall of fame that she helped create?

In the news

SMS Scharnhorst, c. 1908

A factory fire in Delhi, India, kills at least forty-three people and injures more than fifty others.
In India, the four suspects in the Hyderabad gang rape case are shot dead by the police.
The wreck of the cruiser SMS Scharnhorst (pictured), which sank during the Battle of the Falkland Islands in December 1914, is discovered.
The Power of Siberia pipeline begins operations, delivering Russian natural gas to China.

On this day

December 9: Feast of the Immaculate Conception (Catholicism, 2019)

Child with smallpox, 1973

1775 – American Revolutionary War: After their loss in the Battle of Great Bridge, British authorities were forced to evacuate from the Colony of Virginia.
1905 – Legislation establishing state secularism in France was passed by the Chamber of Deputies.
1969 – U.S. secretary of state William P. Rogers proposed his eponymous plan for a ceasefire in the War of Attrition; Egypt's and Jordan's acceptance of the plan over Palestine Liberation Organization objections led to civil war in Jordan in September 1970.
1979 – A World Health Organization commission of scientists certified the global eradication of smallpox (patient pictured), making it the only human infectious disease to date to have been completely eradicated.
2016 – South Korean president Park Geun-hye was impeached, marking the culmination of the country's political scandal.

Gertrude of Brunswick (d. 1117) · Joe Kelley (b. 1871) · Denise Phua (b. 1959)

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From today's featured list

Tina Maze

Slovenia first participated as an independent nation at the Olympic Games at the 1992 Winter Olympics in Albertville, France, and the country has sent athletes to compete at every Games since then. Slovenian athletes first competed at the Olympics in Stockholm, at the 1912 Summer Olympics, as part of the Austrian team. There, Rudolf Cvetko became the first Slovene to win an Olympic medal, a silver in the men's team sabre. Then, until Slovenia's independence, they competed as part of Yugoslavia. Athletes representing Slovenia have won a total of 23 medals at the Summer Olympic Games and another 17 at the Winter Olympic Games. Slovenia's most successful Summer Olympics have been the 2000 Summer Olympics where they won two gold medals and the 2008 Summer Olympics where they won five medals overall, including one gold. The most successful winter games were the 2014 Winter Olympics, where Slovenian athletes won a record eight medals, including two gold. Tina Maze (pictured, alpine skiing) and Iztok Čop (rowing) are the most decorated post-independence Slovenian Olympians, with four medals each. (Full list...)

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Today's featured picture

The Savage State is the first in a series of five paintings entitled The Course of Empire, created by American artist Thomas Cole between 1833 and 1836. The series depicts the growth and fall of an imaginary city, situated on the lower end of a river valley. This first painting shows the scenery before the civilizing influence of men change the landscape. A hunter clad in skins runs through the wilderness pursuing a fleeing deer, canoes paddle up the river and a few tipis cluster around a campfire. The visual references are those of aboriginal North American life, and the painting depicts the ideal state of the natural world, serene and unspoiled by humanity.

Painting credit: Thomas Cole

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