Wikipedia:Main Page history/2021 July 24

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From today's featured article

Greta Thunberg, featured on the track

"The 1975" is a song by the band of the same name and the first track on Notes on a Conditional Form (2020), their fourth album. In the song, Greta Thunberg (pictured) calls for civil disobedience in response to climate change, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Each of their three previous albums began with a track titled "The 1975" that used the same lyrics, beginning "Go down / Soft sound", but the lead vocalist Matty Healy thought it was important to give a platform to Thunberg, the "voice of this generation". After the recording in Stockholm, they released the song earlier than intended—on 24 July 2019. Proceeds from the song were donated to the grassroots environmental movement Extinction Rebellion, at Thunberg's request. The band opened encores at their performances with the song, before the COVID-19 pandemic halted their touring. It was received positively by music critics, many of whom praised the album's transition from the end of "The 1975" into the punk rock song "People". (Full article...)

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Did you know ...

Leeds Tiger

... that when the Leeds Tiger (pictured) went on display in Leeds in 1863 it was described as a "work of art quite as much as an object for scientific observation"?
... that New Zealand's Grace Prendergast was the highest-ranked female rower in the world in 2019?
... that Drew Goddard wrote the soundtrack for Bad Times at the El Royale into his screenplay so a studio would be forced to purchase the licenses for each piece of music?
... that during Sam Brownback's 2008 presidential campaign, he mentioned the yellow brick road in both the speech that began and the speech that ended his candidacy?
... that shooter Tehani Egodawela was the third person selected from Sri Lanka to compete in the 2020 Summer Olympics?
... that when R. Bintoro was put in command of the Papua Military Region, he wrote the lyrics for the military region's march?
... that the cadet scandal of 1942 resulted in a widespread persecution of gay men in Buenos Aires?
... that Robert Sacchi, who played many Humphrey Bogart roles due to their physical resemblance, "never thought Bogie was too terrific-looking" and "wanted to look like Gregory Peck" instead?

In the news

Brisbane

The Australian city of Brisbane (pictured) is announced as the host city of the 2032 Summer Olympics.
In sumo, Terunofuji Haruo becomes the 73rd yokozuna.
Liverpool Maritime Mercantile City in England is stripped of its status as a UNESCO World Heritage Site due to modern development in the area.
In basketball, the Milwaukee Bucks defeat the Phoenix Suns to win the NBA Finals.
Investigative journalists at the Pegasus Project report that multiple governments have used cyberweapons against heads of state, journalists, human rights activists, political opponents and dissidents.

On this day

July 24: Pioneer Day in Utah, United States (1847)

Khrushchev and Nixon debating

1411 – Scottish clansmen led by Donald of Islay, Lord of the Isles, and Alexander Stewart, Earl of Mar, fought the Battle of Harlaw near Inverurie, Scotland.
1910 – Ottoman forces captured the city of Shkodër, ending the Albanian revolt of 1910.
1959 – Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev and U.S. vice president Richard Nixon held an impromptu debate (pictured) at the opening of the American National Exhibition at Sokolniki Park in Moscow.
1980 – At the Moscow Olympics, the Australian swimming team, nicknamed the Quietly Confident Quartet, won the men's 4 × 100 metre medley relay.
2014 – Fifty minutes after departing Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, Air Algérie Flight 5017 disappeared from radar, and its wreckage was found the next day in Mali, with no survivors of the 116 people aboard.

Muhammad ibn Tughj al-Ikhshid (d. 946)
Robert Graves (b. 1895)
Torrie Wilson (b. 1975)

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Today's featured picture

John Adams Dix (July 24, 1798 – April 21, 1879) was Secretary of the Treasury, Governor of New York and a major general in the Union Army during the American Civil War. He was notable for arresting the pro-Southern Maryland General Assembly, preventing that divided border state from seceding, and for arranging a system for prisoner exchange via the Dix–Hill Cartel, concluded in partnership with Confederate Major General Daniel Harvey Hill. This line engraving of Dix was produced around 1902 by the Department of the Treasury's Bureau of Engraving and Printing (BEP) as part of a BEP presentation album of the first 42 secretaries of the treasury.

Engraving credit: Bureau of Engraving and Printing; restored by Andrew Shiva

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