Wikipedia:Main Page history/2020 February 22

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From today's featured article

Valley View is a mid-19th-century Greek Revival residence and farm overlooking the South Branch Potomac River northwest of Romney, West Virginia. Sitting atop a promontory where Depot Valley joins the South Branch Potomac River valley, the house was built by James Parsons Jr. in 1855. It is a two-story brick structure with a rectangular architectural plan. The front entrance is covered by a small portico, topped with a pediment supported by wooden Doric columns. The rear of the house, with a two-story wood porch stretching across it, faces Mill Creek Mountain. Each of the eight large rooms of the original structure contains a fireplace framed by a wooden trabeated mantelpiece with classical elements. The original windows, wooden trim, and materials in the main section of the house are intact. The house was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2012 as a locally significant example of Greek Revival architecture. (Full article...)

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Did you know ...

Reception to Washington on April 21, 1789, at Trenton by Wyeth

... that a painting (pictured) by N. C. Wyeth portraying George Washington's reception at Trenton was the most expensive gift ever given to Thomas Edison State University?
... that Ron Berteling is the first Dutch ice hockey player to be knighted by the Netherlands?
... that on this day in 1814, a tsar, a king, and a prince met at Troyes to discuss their war against Napoleon?
... that Nino Tkeshelashvili and other early Georgian feminists campaigned to uphold women's "moral standards", labeling prostitution a "social evil"?
... that John F. Kennedy used the first satellite in a geosynchronous orbit to phone Nigerian prime minister Abubakar Tafawa Balewa from a ship?
... that Gustav Brecher, who conducted the world premieres of Jonny spielt auf and Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny at the Leipzig Opera, was dismissed by the Nazis in 1933?
... that a section of Japan National Route 339 on Cape Tappi is a staircase?
... that fashion historian Caroline Weber discovered two lost essays by Marcel Proust while researching one of her books?

In the news

The Dáil chamber

Shootings in Hanau, Germany, leave eleven people dead and five others wounded.
The Irish general election concludes with no party holding a majority of seats in Dáil Éireann (chamber pictured).
South Korean film Parasite wins four Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director for Bong Joon-ho.
A mass shooting in Korat, Thailand, leaves 30 people dead and more than 50 others injured.

On this day

February 22

Dolly

1316 – Catalan forces of Ferdinand of Majorca defeated those loyal to Princess Matilda of Hainaut in the Battle of Picotin on the Peloponnese peninsula in modern-day Greece.
1876 – A Swedish woman named Karolina Olsson went to sleep and purportedly fell into a state of hibernation that lasted for the next 32 years.
1944 – World War II: U.S. forces carried out a bombing raid on the Nazi-occupied Dutch city of Nijmegen, killing at least 800 civilians by accident.
1980 – At the Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, New York, the United States ice hockey team defeated the Soviet team in an unlikely victory that became known as the Miracle on Ice.
1997 – Scientists at the Roslin Institute in Scotland announced the birth of Dolly (pictured), a female sheep who was the first mammal to have successfully been cloned from an adult cell.

García Sánchez I of Pamplona (d. 970) · Sarah Fuller Flower Adams (b. 1805) · Ted Kennedy (b. 1932)

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Today's featured picture

The Tarvasjõgi is a 30-kilometre-long (19 mi) river in Estonia. It is a tributary of the Jäneda, which in turn flows into the Jägala and thence to the Baltic Sea, and has a 64.7-square-kilometre (25.0 sq mi) drainage basin.

This picture shows the Tarvasjõgi flowing through a forested landscape in the Põhja-Kõrvemaa Nature Reserve. The area was scoured by glaciers, the most recent one retreating 12,000 years ago, and displays diverse features, including eskers, sand and gravel kames, fens, sandy heaths, bogs, and more than thirty lakes. Almost half of the reserve is covered by bog and riparian forests, with a forest cover of 40 percent consisting mostly of coniferous trees. Wolves, Eurasian lynxes and brown bears can be found here, as well as protected birds such as black storks, golden eagles, western capercaillies and common cranes.

Photograph credit: Ireen Trummer

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