Wikipedia:Main Page history/2020 March 6
From today's featured articleThe water pipit (Anthus spinoletta) is a small songbird which breeds in the mountains of Southern Europe and Southern Asia eastwards to China. It is a short-distance migrant; many birds move to lower altitudes or wet open lowlands in winter. In breeding plumage it has greyish-brown upperparts, weakly streaked with darker brown, and pale pink-buff underparts fading to whitish on the lower belly. The head is grey with a broad white eyebrow, and the outer tail feathers are white. The winter colours are duller, with more brown. Water pipits construct a cup-like nest on the ground under vegetation or in cliff crevices and lay four to six speckled greyish-white eggs, which hatch in about two weeks with about two more weeks until the chicks fledge. Although pipits occasionally catch insects in flight, they feed mainly on small invertebrates picked off the ground or vegetation, and also on some plant material. The species population is large and stable overall. (Full article...)
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On this dayMarch 6: Independence Day in Ghana (1957)
Luigi Alamanni (b. 1495) · Ella P. Stewart (b. 1893) · Francisco Xavier do Amaral (d. 2012) |
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The cartography of Jerusalem is the creation, editing, processing and printing of maps of Jerusalem from ancient times until the rise of modern surveying techniques. Almost all extant maps known to scholars from the pre-modern era were prepared by Christian mapmakers for a Christian European audience. Maps of Jerusalem can be categorised between original factual maps, copied maps and imaginary maps, the latter being based on religious books. The maps were produced in a variety of materials, including parchment, vellum, mosaic, wall paintings and paper. Scholars have published cartographic histories of the city, from Titus Tobler and Reinhold Röhricht's studies in the 19th century to those of Hebrew University of Jerusalem academics Rehav Rubin and Milka Levy-Rubin in recent decades. These maps focus on the Old City; the expansion of the city from the mid-nineteenth century coincided with the production of the first modern map (shown) by Franz Sieber. (Full list...)
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Florence Cathedral, formally the Cattedrale di Santa Maria del Fiore, is a basilica in Florence, Italy. It was begun in 1296 in the Gothic style to a design of Arnolfo di Cambio, and was structurally completed by 1436, with the dome designed by Filippo Brunelleschi. The exterior of the cathedral is faced with polychrome marble panels in various shades of green and pink, bordered by white, and has an elaborate 19th-century Gothic Revival facade by Emilio De Fabris. This picture shows the curved interior of the dome; the surface was originally whitewashed, but Cosimo I de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, decided to have it painted with a representation of the Last Judgment. This enormous work, comprising 3,600 m2 (39,000 sq ft) of painted surface, was started in 1568 by Giorgio Vasari and Federico Zuccari, and not completed until 1579. The upper portion, near the roof lantern, represents the Twenty-Four Elders of the Book of Revelation, and was finished by Vasari before his death in 1574. Zuccari and his collaborators finished the other portions – from top to bottom, choirs of angels; Christ, Mary and saints; virtues, gifts of the Holy Spirit and the Beatitudes; and capital sins and Hell. These frescoes are considered Zuccari's greatest work, but the quality of the artwork is uneven because of the input of different artists and their varying techniques. Photograph credit: Livioandronico2013
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