Wikipedia:Main Page history/2021 July 16b

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From today's featured article

Morningside Park is a 30-acre (12-hectare) public park in Upper Manhattan, New York City. The area, originally known as "Muscota" by the Lenape Native Americans, features a cliff that separates Morningside Heights (to the west) from Harlem. The city commissioned Central Park's designers Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux to produce a design for the park, which they did in 1873. Jacob Wrey Mould was hired to design new plans in 1880, but little progress occurred until Olmsted and Vaux were asked to modify their plans following Mould's death in 1886. After the park was completed in 1895, three sculptures were installed: Lafayette and Washington, Carl Schurz Memorial, and Alfred Lincoln Seligman Fountain. Columbia University proposed constructing a gym in the park's southern end in the early 1960s, but abandoned the plan after students protested in 1968. The site of the unbuilt gym was turned into a waterfall and pond around 1990, and an arboretum was added in 1998. (Full article...)

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Theodolinda Hahnsson

... that Theodolinda Hahnsson (pictured) is the first known Finnish-language female author?
... that Chinese-descended mining federations in Indonesia, like the Santiaogou Federation, fought bitter battles with the Dutch to preserve their democratic forms of government in the early 19th century?
... that a Midtown Manhattan townhouse at 46 West 55th Street, once occupied by doctors, was later bought by a clothing store and a fashion firm?
... that Lebanese academic Zahia Kaddoura was the first woman to be appointed a dean at the Lebanese University?
... that Leonard Woods, a Black miner accused of killing a white mine foreman from a prominent family, was possibly lynched to prevent a trial that could have tainted the reputation of the foreman and his family?
... that for the morning song "Die güldne Sonne voll Freud und Wonne", the poet found a new metre, and the composer a new melody, to reflect the many meanings of "rising"?
... that in the 1990s, the Libertarian Party of New Hampshire was the largest third party in the United States in terms of state legislators since the Socialist Party of America in the 1930s?
... that in the surreal art game Islands: Non-Places, a bus stop may become an egg incubator and a fountain may conceal a vast underground space?

In the news

Flooding in Valkenburg aan de Geul, Netherlands

Severe floods (pictured) across western Europe leave more than 120 people dead and 1,300 others missing.
In South Africa, protests and subsequent unrest over the jailing of former president Jacob Zuma result in 212 deaths and more than 2,200 arrests.
The Supreme Court of Nepal designates Sher Bahadur Deuba as prime minister.
The Party of Action and Solidarity wins a majority of seats in the Moldovan parliamentary election.
Anti-government protests occur in Cuba amid food shortages and a surge in COVID-19 infections.

On this day

July 16

Haile Selassie in 1970

1232 – Muhammad ibn Yusuf, who later established the last Muslim state in Spain, was elected the ruler of Arjona.
1782 – Mozart's opera Die Entführung aus dem Serail premiered in Vienna, after which Emperor Joseph II anecdotally remarked that it had "too many notes".
1931 – Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie (pictured) promulgated the nation's first constitution, replacing the Fetha Nagast, which had been the supreme law since the Middle Ages.
1951 – The Catcher in the Rye, an American coming-of-age novel by J. D. Salinger, was first published.
1983 – A Sikorsky S-61 helicopter operated by British Airways crashed in thick fog in the Celtic Sea, killing 20 of the 26 people on board.

Meinhardt Schomberg (d. 1719)
Stan McCabe (b. 1910)
Evelyn Ebsworth (d. 2015)

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From today's featured list

Zapopan

The Mexican state of Jalisco is divided into 125 municipalities. According to the 2020 Mexican Census, it is the third-most-populous state, with 8,348,151 inhabitants, and the seventh-largest by land area, spanning 78,595.9 square kilometres (30,346.0 sq mi). Municipalities in Jalisco are administratively autonomous of the state, in accordance with the 115th article of the 1917 Constitution of Mexico. Their legal framework derives from the state constitution. Every three years, citizens elect a municipal president (Spanish: presidente municipal) by a plurality-voting system who heads a concurrently elected municipal council (ayuntamiento) responsible for providing all the public services for their constituents. The largest municipality by population is Zapopan (pictured), with 1,476,491 residents (17.68 percent of the state's total), while the smallest is Santa María del Oro, with 1,815 residents. The largest municipality by land area is Mezquitic, which spans 3,363.60 km² (1,298.69 sq mi), and the smallest is Techaluta, with 79.20 km² (30.58 sq mi). (Full list...)

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Noordhoek is a coastal town in the Western Cape, South Africa, located below Chapman's Peak on the west coast of the Cape Peninsula and is approximately 35 km (22 mi) to the south of Cape Town. The beach is a six-kilometre (3.7 mi) stretch of fine white sand used by walkers and horse-riders; winds are often strong and the sea is cold and wild. The neighbouring suburb of Kommetjie can be seen in the distance.

Photograph credit: Diego Delso

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