Wikipedia:Main Page history/2020 November 19

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From today's featured article

2019 Women's Boat Race trophy

The Boat Race 2019 took place on 7 April 2019. Held annually, The Boat Race is a side-by-side rowing race between crews from the universities of Oxford and Cambridge along a 4.2-mile (6.8 km) tidal stretch of the River Thames in south-west London. For the fourth time in the history of the event, the men's, the women's and both reserves' races were all held on the Tideway on the same day. Cambridge won the women's and men's races, increasing their lead in the overall record to 44–30 for the women and 84–80 for the men. In the women's reserve race, Cambridge's Blondie defeated Oxford's Osiris, their fourth consecutive victory. The men's reserve race was won by Cambridge's Goldie, who defeated Oxford's Isis. The races were watched by thousands of spectators lining the banks of the Thames, and broadcast live in the United Kingdom on the BBC. They were also live-streamed on YouTube, and by media organisations in Germany, South Africa and China, and around the world. (Full article...)

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Did you know ...

Six-fingered glove and prop sword from The Princess Bride

... that when Mandy Patinkin played Inigo Montoya in a 2020 virtual live dramatic reading of the Princess Bride script, he used the six-fingered sword (pictured) from the 1987 film?
... that bishop Hermann of Schleswig was never actually bishop of Schleswig?
... that Cleveland Indigenous activist Sundance successfully petitioned Oberlin High School in Ohio to change its school mascot from the Indians to the Phoenix in 2007?
... that a Carthaginian army trapped 40,000 rebels and starved them into cannibalism before attacking and killing every man at the Battle of the Saw?
... that Moneyball depicted Grady Fuson being fired by the Oakland Athletics, though in reality he left voluntarily?
... that the Japanese rock band Real spells its name with the Cyrillic letter Я to indicate a desire to show its "real inside and outside"?
... that Daisy Yen Wu helped establish the new field of nutrition research at Peking Union Medical College?
... that the world's first fusion reactor was called the Diffusion Inhibitor so managers at NACA would not know what it was?

In the news

COVID-19 pandemic: Disease; Virus; By location; Impact; Portal

SpaceX Crew-1 launching from Kennedy Space Center

SpaceX Crew-1 launches (pictured) with astronauts Michael Hopkins, Victor Glover, Soichi Noguchi, and Shannon Walker.
Maia Sandu is elected the first female President of Moldova.
Lewis Hamilton wins the Formula One World Championship, while Mercedes win the constructors' title.
In Peru, following the impeachment and removal of President Martín Vizcarra, interim president Manuel Merino resigns amidst nationwide protests.

On this day

November 19: International Men's Day; World Toilet Day; Liberation Day in Mali (1968)

Mayflower

1620 – The Mayflower (depicted), which brought the Pilgrims from England to the New World, sighted Cape Cod.
1863 – American Civil War: U.S. president Abraham Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address at the dedication of the Soldiers' National Cemetery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.
1942 – World War II: Soviet troops launched Operation Uranus at the Battle of Stalingrad with the goal of encircling Axis forces, turning the tide of the battle in their favour.
2010 – The first of four explosions occurred at the Pike River Mine in the West Coast in New Zealand's worst mining disaster in nearly a century.

Eustache Le Sueur (b. 1617)
C. X. Larrabee (b. 1843)
Sun Li-jen (d. 1990)

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Today's featured picture

Apollo and Daphne is a life-sized Baroque marble sculpture by the Italian artist Gian Lorenzo Bernini, created between 1622 and 1625. Housed in the Galleria Borghese in Rome as part of the Borghese Collection, the work depicts the climax of the story of Apollo and Daphne in Ovid's Metamorphoses. Apollo clutches Daphne's hip, pursuing her as she flees from him. Apollo wears a laurel crown, and Daphne is portrayed halfway through her metamorphosis from human form into the laurel tree, with her arms already transforming into its branches as she flees and calls to her father to save her from Apollo.

Sculpture credit: Gian Lorenzo Bernini

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