Wikipedia:Main Page history/2020 May 26

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From today's featured article

Paul E. Patton (born May 26, 1937) is an American politician who served as the 59th governor of Kentucky from 1995 to 2003. He became wealthy operating coal mines for 20 years, then sold most of his coal interests in the late 1970s and entered politics. After serving briefly in the cabinet of Governor John Y. Brown Jr. and chairing the state Democratic Party, he was elected lieutenant governor in 1991. Four years later, he was elected governor over the Republican Party's Larry Forgy. The major achievement of Patton's first term was overhauling higher education, including making the state's community colleges and technical schools independent of the University of Kentucky and organizing them into the Kentucky Community and Technical College System. Because of a 1992 amendment to the Kentucky Constitution, he was the first governor eligible to succeed himself in office since James Garrard in 1800, and he was re-elected in 1999. (Full article...)

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Did you know ...

Likelike

... that Hawaiian princess Likelike (pictured) died under mysterious circumstances in 1887 amid rumors that she had been malevolently "prayed" to death?
... that readings of The Crime and the Silence, a book about the Jedwabne massacre, have been picketed by the book's opponents?
... that CIA officer Howard Bane proposed that the Special Operations Group storm the Chinese embassy in Ghana and kill all its occupants during the 1966 coup?
... that the facade of the then 1,200-year-old Basilica of Sant'Alessandro was replaced with a Neoclassical one in the 19th century?
... that Dalma Iványi has won ten Hungarian women's basketball championships and played for three teams in the WNBA?
... that during the Battle of McDowell, Confederate soldiers attempted to use the dead bodies of their comrades to build breastworks?
... that when the Act of Parliament renaming the Royal Ulster Constabulary was passed, the force was not named the "Northern Ireland Police Service" because the acronym would have been NIPS?
... that it took more than eight hours to apply makeup for the first time to the actor playing the character Bib Fortuna in Return of the Jedi?

In the news

COVID-19 pandemic

The aircraft involved in the accident, in 2015

A Pakistan International Airlines passenger aircraft (pictured) crashes in Karachi, killing ninety-seven people.
Cyclone Amphan impacts eastern India and Bangladesh, killing over one hundred people and forcing the evacuation of more than four million others.
The Iranian Navy frigate Jamaran accidentally strikes the Iranian support vessel Konarak with a missile, killing nineteen sailors.

On this day

May 26: Independence Day in Georgia (1918)

Damage to the Interstate 40 bridge

1328 – English friar William of Ockham, who popularised the methodological principle known as Occam's razor, secretly left Avignon under threat from Pope John XXII.
1822 – The deadliest fire in Norwegian history occurred at a church in Grue, killing at least 113 people.
1938 – The House Un-American Activities Committee was established to investigate alleged disloyalty and subversive activities by people or organizations in the U.S. suspected of having communist or fascist ties.
2002 – Barges being towed destroyed part of a bridge (aftermath pictured) near Webbers Falls, Oklahoma, causing 11 vehicles to fall into Robert S. Kerr Reservoir on the Arkansas River.

Louis I of Naples (d. 1362)
Abdelkader al-Jazairi (d. 1883)
Lauryn Hill (b. 1975)

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Today's featured picture

Saint-Étienne-du-Mont is a church located on the Montagne Sainte-Geneviève in the 5th arrondissement of Paris, France. It contains the shrine of Saint Genevieve, the patron saint of Paris, as well as the tombs of Blaise Pascal and Jean Racine. This photograph of the church's interior, looking eastward, shows the slight skew of the choir relative to the nave, the high rib-vaulted ceiling, the wooden pulpit on the right, and the triforium gallery that runs around the church at mid-level. An unusual feature for a French church, it is reached by serpentine staircases circling the piers. The stone rood screen, dating back to 1530–1545, is the only remaining example of a rood screen in Paris; much of the stained glass also dates to the same period.

Photograph credit: David Iliff

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