Wikipedia:Main Page history/2019 October 4

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From today's featured article

Philadelphia Museum version

Saint Francis Receiving the Stigmata is the subject of two unsigned paintings, nearly identical except for their size, that were both completed around 1430. Art historians usually attribute them to the Flemish artist Jan van Eyck. The larger panel measures 29.3 cm × 33.4 cm (11.5 in × 13.1 in) and is in the Sabauda Gallery in Turin, Italy; the smaller panel is 12.7 cm × 14.6 cm (5.0 in × 5.7 in) and is in the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The paintings show Saint Francis of Assisi kneeling in front of detailed rock formations as he receives the stigmata of the crucified Christ on the palms of his hands and soles of his feet. A panoramic landscape seems to relegate the figures in the foreground to secondary importance. The Philadelphia wood panel comes from the same tree as that of two paintings definitively attributed to van Eyck, and the Italian panel has underdrawings of a quality that probably could only have come from him. Today the consensus is that both were painted by the same hand. (Full article...)

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Did you know...

Memphis-style barbecue spaghetti

... that John Shelton Reed wrote that barbecue spaghetti (pictured) "is to spaghetti Bolognese as Cincinnati chili is to the Tex-Mex variety"?
... that under the governorship of Ye Xuanping, Guangdong grew economically prosperous and increased its independence from Beijing, earning him the nickname "Emperor of the South"?
... that the director of the film The VelociPastor thought of the idea when his phone autocorrected "Velociraptor" to "Veloci Pastor"?
... that temperance activist Sarah Robinson visited brothels in an attempt to improve the health of prostitutes and their clients?
... that the nudibranch Tritoniella belli is avoided by several predatory starfishes but is inefficiently preyed on by the sea anemone Isotealia antarctica?
... that the Irish Occupied Territories Bill would make doing business with Israeli settlers punishable by fines of up to €250,000 and up to five years in prison?
... that John Cooper is the first political candidate to defeat an incumbent mayor of Nashville since the city consolidated with Davidson County, Tennessee?
... that the Women's Defence Relief Corps trained British women to fight during the First World War?

In the news

Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress

A privately-owned Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress (pictured) crashes in Connecticut, United States, killing seven people and injuring seven others.
Peruvian president Martín Vizcarra dissolves Congress, resulting in a constitutional crisis.
At the UCI Road World Championships, Mads Pedersen of Denmark wins the men's road race and Annemiek van Vleuten of the Netherlands wins the women's road race.
An earthquake strikes Maluku, Indonesia, killing at least thirty people.

On this day

October 4

Replica of Sputnik 1

1941 – Willie Gillis, one of Norman Rockwell's trademark characters, debuted on the cover of The Saturday Evening Post.
1957 – The Soviet spacecraft Sputnik 1 (replica pictured), the first artificial satellite to orbit the Earth, was launched by an R-7 rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome.
1958 – The current Constitution of France was signed into law, establishing the French Fifth Republic.
2003 – A suicide bomber killed 21 people and injured 51 others inside the Maxim restaurant in Haifa, Israel.
2010 – The dam holding a waste reservoir in western Hungary collapsed, freeing 1 million m³ (35 million cu ft) of red mud, which flooded nearby communities and killed ten people.

Charles Pearson (b. 1793) · Lucy Tayiah Eads (b. 1888) · Carl Josef Bayer (d. 1904)

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From today's featured list

The naval ensign of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia

The Navy of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes – from 1929, the Royal Yugoslav Navy – included a wide range of vessels during its existence from 1920 to 1945, including sea-going warships and river monitors that operated on the Danube and other rivers. In 1921, the only modern warships were twelve torpedo boats. Early in its history, little was done to improve the fleet, but modernisation was underway from the early 1930s, with a British-made flotilla leader followed by a class of modern French-designed destroyers. Almost all of the fleet was captured by Italy during the April 1941 Axis invasion of Yugoslavia, but a few vessels escaped to form a navy-in-exile, which operated under British supervision. Later in the war, several vessels that had been in Italian service were returned to the navy-in-exile, and these were joined by a British corvette. At the end of the war, these vessels were transferred to the fledgling Yugoslav Navy. (Full list...)

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Today's featured picture

Buster Keaton (October 4, 1895 – February 1, 1966) was an American actor, comedian, film director, producer, screenwriter, and stunt performer. He is best known for his silent films, in which his trademark was physical comedy with a consistently stoic, deadpan expression that earned him the nickname "The Great Stone Face". Critic Roger Ebert wrote of Keaton's "extraordinary period from 1920 to 1929" when he "worked without interruption" on a series of films that make him "the greatest actor-director in the history of the movies". His career declined afterward with a loss of artistic independence when he signed with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, his wife divorced him, and he descended into alcoholism. He recovered in the 1940s, remarried, and revived his career as an honored comic performer for the rest of his life, earning an Academy Honorary Award in 1959.

Photograph credit: Bain News Service; restored by Fallschirmjäger

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