Wikipedia:Main Page history/2019 January 11

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From today's featured article

American science fiction and fantasy magazines flourished from the mid-1920s to the 1940s. The first magazine to focus on fantasy and horror was Weird Tales, launched in 1923, which established itself as the leading weird fiction magazine over the next two decades, with regular contributors such as H. P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith and Robert E. Howard. In 1926 Hugo Gernsback's Amazing Stories appeared (pictured), running only science fiction. Its letters column, which often provided contact information, marked the beginning of organized science fiction fandom. Astounding Stories of Super-Science, founded in 1930, became the leading magazine in its genre, publishing early classics such as Murray Leinster's "Sidewise in Time". John W. Campbell took over as editor in 1937 and ran works by Robert A. Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, and A. E. van Vogt. Only eight science fiction and fantasy magazines survived World War II, with all but Astounding still in pulp magazine format. (Full article...)

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Did you know...

U.S. Zouave Cadets

... that The New York Times stated that, with one exception, the United States Zouave Cadets (pictured) were "all young men of extraordinary muscular power"?
... that voice actress Yukari Anzai was appointed as a Japanese ambassador for the hot springs of Hsinchu County in Taiwan?
... that Max Reger composed Introduction, Passacaglia and Fugue, Op. 127, for Karl Straube, to be played as the first organ piece at the new Centennial Hall in Breslau in 1913?
... that Thomas F. Mulledy sold the slaves owned by the Maryland province of the Jesuits in 1838 in order to pay off its debt?
... that although Indian cassava mosaic virus does indeed infect cassava crops in India, the actual origin of the virus is unknown?
... that a scientific paper by Thomas Wilkinson King about the thyroid gland fell into obscurity for nearly a century before being discussed by Sir Humphry Rolleston in a lecture in 1933?
... that the Monrovia Church massacre was the worst single atrocity of the Liberian civil war?
... that the writer of the play Why We Have a Body was inspired by Harriet the Spy, whom she viewed as the first lesbian she had ever encountered?

In the news

Félix Tshisekedi

Félix Tshisekedi (pictured) is declared the winner of the 2018 Democratic Republic of the Congo presidential election.
Eight soldiers are arrested and two are killed after a failed coup attempt to oust Gabonese President Ali Bongo Ondimba.
Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople grants autocephaly to the Orthodox Church of Ukraine in the ongoing schism within Eastern Orthodox Christianity.
The China National Space Administration's Chang'e 4 becomes the first spacecraft to land on the far side of the Moon.

On this day

January 11

French troops in the Ruhr

1693 – An intensity XI earthquake, the most powerful in Italian history, struck the island of Sicily.
1787 – German-born British astronomer William Herschel discovered two Uranian moons, later named by his son as Oberon and Titania.
1923 – Troops from France (pictured) and Belgium invaded the Ruhr to force the German Weimar Republic to pay its reparations in the aftermath of World War I.
1964 – In a landmark report, U.S. Surgeon General Luther Terry issued the warning that smoking may be hazardous to people's health, concluding that it has a causative role in lung cancer, chronic bronchitis, and other illnesses.
2003 – After Chicago police detective Jon Burge was discovered to have forced confessions from more than 200 suspects, Governor of Illinois George Ryan commuted the death sentences of 167 prisoners and pardoned 4 more.

Nicolas Steno (b. 1638) · John Molson (d. 1836) · Eva Tanguay (d. 1947)

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From today's featured list

Alan Jackson

Nineteen different songs topped the Hot Country Singles & Tracks chart in 2003, based on weekly airplay data from country music radio stations compiled by Nielsen Broadcast Data Systems. Hot Country Songs is a chart that ranks the top-performing country music songs in the United States, published by Billboard magazine under the name Hot Country Singles & Tracks that year. The highest total number of weeks spent at number one by a song in 2003 was the eight achieved by "It's Five O'Clock Somewhere", a collaboration between Alan Jackson (pictured) and Jimmy Buffett. The duet spent an initial seven weeks at the top, was replaced for a week, and then returned for a final week at number one. The song's first spell at number one tied for the longest unbroken run at the top with "Have You Forgotten?" by Darryl Worley. Three singers achieved their first number one hits in 2003: Gary Allan, Joe Nichols, and Dierks Bentley. (Full list...)

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Today's featured picture

Charles Catton (1728–1798) was an English painter of coaches, landscapes, animals and figures. Born in Norwich as one of possibly 35 children of his twice-married father, Catton studied drawing at the St. Martin's Lane Academy. He became a member of the Society of Artists, and exhibited various pictures in its galleries in 1760–1764. He was a founding member of the Royal Academy and, in 1784, was master of the Worshipful Company of Painter-Stainers. He exhibited at the Academy from its foundation until the year of his death.

This picture is a self-portrait of Catton, dating from 1769.

Painting: Charles Catton

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