Wikipedia:Main Page history/2021 December 29

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From today's featured article

Ezra Meeker (December 29, 1830 – December 3, 1928) was an American pioneer who traveled the Oregon Trail by ox-drawn wagon in 1852, migrating from Iowa to the Oregon Territory with his wife and newborn son. The entire Meeker party survived the difficult six-month journey. In 1862, he settled at the present site of Puyallup, Washington, where he grew hops for brewing beer, and served as Puyallup's first mayor. An infestation of hop aphids in 1891 took much of his fortune. He made four trips to the Klondike during its gold rush, bringing groceries in an unsuccessful attempt to recoup his losses. In 1906–1908, convinced that the Oregon Trail was being forgotten, Meeker retraced his steps along the Trail by wagon despite being in his late 70s, seeking to build monuments in communities along the way. He reached New York and Washington, D.C., where he met President Theodore Roosevelt. He wrote several books, and traveled the Trail several more times, including by airplane in 1924. (Full article...)

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Did you know ...

Elisabeth Schmitz

... that Kristallnacht prompted Elisabeth Schmitz (pictured) to leave her teaching job, unwilling to work for "a government that permitted the synagogues to be set afire"?
... that among the traditions of the University of Texas at Arlington are bed racing and oozeball?
... that Brazilian student Bruno Borges disappeared, leaving fourteen handwritten encrypted books and a statue over two metres (6.6 ft) tall in his bedroom?
... that the Austro-Hungarian yacht Dalmat carried Archduke Franz Ferdinand on his journey to Sarajevo in 1914 and returned with his body?
... that in the 1880s Joseph T. Wilson wrote the "most comprehensive study of African American military service" of the era?
... that consuming the vitamin riboflavin in large amounts will cause urine to have a bright yellow color?
... that the leaders of Nazi Germany believed that Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin were puppets of an international Jewish conspiracy?
... that Indonesian politician Iskandar Ramis had to be hospitalized after attempting to make juice?

In the news

Desmond Tutu

South African archbishop and human rights activist Desmond Tutu (pictured) dies at the age of 90.
Ariane flight VA256, carrying the James Webb Space Telescope, is launched from the Guiana Space Centre.
A ferry fire in Bangladesh kills at least 40 people.
Floods in Malaysia leave at least 46 people dead and displace more than 68,000 others.
At least 85 people are killed in a shipwreck off the coast of Madagascar.

On this day

December 29

Sun Yat-sen

1860 – To counter the French Navy's Gloire, the world's first ironclad warship, the Royal Navy launched the world's first iron-hulled armoured warship, HMS Warrior.
1890 – Sioux Wars: The United States Army killed 250 to 300 Lakota men, women and children at the Wounded Knee Massacre, beginning the Ghost Dance War.
1911 – Sun Yat-sen (pictured) was elected the provisional president of the Republic of China in Nanjing.
1959 – American physicist Richard Feynman gave a speech entitled "There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom" at Caltech, anticipating the field of nanotechnology.
1996 – Peace accords were signed under the leadership of President Álvaro Arzú and guerrilla leader Rolando Morán, ending the 36-year-long Guatemalan Civil War.

Empress Genmei (d. 721)
William Ewart Gladstone (b. 1809)
Marie Menken (d. 1970)

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Today's featured picture

Charles Gravier, comte de Vergennes (29 December 1719 – 13 February 1787), was a French statesman and diplomat. He served as the French foreign minister from 1774 during the reign of Louis XVI, notably during the American Revolutionary War. This oil-on-canvas portrait, by the French painter Antoine de Favray, depicts Vergennes in Turkish attire as ambassador to the Ottoman Empire. The painting is in the collection of the Pera Museum in Istanbul.

Painting credit: Antoine de Favray

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