Wikipedia:Main Page history/2020 May 19

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From today's featured article

Peresvet was the lead ship of the three pre-dreadnought battleships of the Peresvet class built for the Imperial Russian Navy at the end of the nineteenth century. The ship was transferred to the Pacific Squadron upon completion and based at Port Arthur from 1903. During the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–05, she participated in the Battle of Port Arthur and was seriously damaged during the Battle of the Yellow Sea and again in the Siege of Port Arthur. The ship was scuttled before the Russians surrendered, then salvaged by the Japanese and placed into service with the name Sagami. Partially rearmed, Sagami was reclassified by the Imperial Japanese Navy as a coastal defence ship in 1912. In 1916, the Japanese sold her to the Russians, their allies since the beginning of World War I. En route to the White Sea in early 1917, she sank off Port Said, Egypt, after striking mines laid by a German submarine. (Full article...)

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In the news

COVID-19 pandemic

Iranian frigate Jamaran

The Iranian Navy frigate Jamaran (pictured) accidentally strikes the Iranian support vessel Konarak with a missile, killing nineteen sailors.
A gas leak in Andhra Pradesh, India, kills thirteen people and injures over a thousand others.
Astronomers announce the discovery of the first black hole located in a star system visible to the naked eye.

On this day

May 19: Pontian Greek Genocide Remembrance Day in Greece (1919); Commemoration of Atatürk, Youth and Sports Day in Turkey (1919)

John Franklin

639 – Ashina Jiesheshuai of the Eastern Turkic Khaganate failed in an attempt to assassinate Emperor Taizong of the Chinese Tang dynasty and was killed by pursuers.
1776 – American Revolutionary War: A Continental Army garrison west of Montreal surrendered to British troops at the Battle of the Cedars.
1845 – Captain John Franklin (engraving shown) departed Greenhithe, England, on an expedition to the Canadian Arctic; all 129 men were later lost when their ships became icebound in Victoria Strait.
2015 – A corroded oil pipeline near Refugio State Beach, California, spilled 142,800 U.S. gallons (3,400 barrels) of crude oil onto one of the most biologically diverse coastlines of the U.S. West Coast.

Alcuin (d. 804)
Nicholas Winton (b. 1909)
Jeffrey Catherine Jones (d. 2011)

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Today's featured picture

Maria Isabel of Braganza (19 May 1797 – 26 December 1818) was the queen consort of Spain from 1816 until her death. She married her maternal uncle King Ferdinand VII of Spain as his second wife, and gave birth the following year to a daughter who died at four months old. A further pregnancy quickly followed, but she died during the subsequent difficult birth.

This oil-on-canvas portrait of Maria Isabel was painted by Bernardo López Piquer in 1829, ten years after her death. The artist had to rely on another painting (an oval-shaped bust portrait) created by his father Vicente López Portaña during her lifetime. It is likely that this official portrait was painted with the approval of Ferdinand VII, from which it is deduced that the king wanted to attribute to his late wife the foundation of the Museo del Prado in Madrid, visible through the window on the left, in which this painting now hangs.

Painting credit: Bernardo López Piquer

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