Wikipedia:Main Page history/2024 February 23
From today's featured article
"Open Arms" is a song by American singer-songwriter SZA (pictured) from her second studio album, SOS (2022), featuring American rapper Travis Scott. It is one of the album's guitar-backed acoustic ballads, exploring a style of music that departs from SZA's usual R&B-leaning sound. Her deceased grandmother, whose vocals were in the album preceding SOS, appears in the song as a way of paying tribute. With lyrics about trying to stay with an ex-lover, "Open Arms" is addressed to a subject whom the narrator eventually leaves to fix her self-esteem despite persistent feelings of attachment to him. Upon release, it charted in the United States, Canada, and Australia, and it peaked at number 67 on the Billboard Global 200. The song is SZA's fourth collaboration with Scott, whose uncharacteristically gentle delivery on his verse was received positively by critics. A solo version was released in January 2023 as a track on the website-exclusive digital edition of SOS. (Full article...)
Did you know ...
- ... that the horned sungem (example pictured) is sometimes a nectar robber?
- ... that the music of Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance was designed to be reactive to the player's actions?
- ... that from 1904 to 1911 Arthur Lewis Hall covered 17,479 miles (28,130 km), mostly on foot, to map the geology of the Transvaal?
- ... that a Rhode Island TV station broadcast for 14 months and then was off the air for 26 years before returning?
- ... that all three of María Esther Biscayart de Tello's children were forcibly disappeared during the Dirty War in Argentina?
- ... that Life magazine said that Babe Ruth's funeral was the "kind of tribute normally reserved for kings and presidents"?
- ... that Mary Clutter used her directorial position at the National Science Foundation to require scientific conferences to include women speakers when presenting research done by them?
- ... that Taubaté became the "city of lies" after a 2012 pregnancy hoax?
In the news
- The Odysseus robotic lander (pictured) of the IM-1 mission performs the first commercial soft landing on the Moon.
- At the British Academy Film Awards, Oppenheimer wins Best Film and six other awards.
- Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny dies in a corrective labor colony near Kharp, at the age of 47.
- In American football, the Kansas City Chiefs defeat the San Francisco 49ers to win the Super Bowl.
On this day
February 23: The Emperor's Birthday in Japan (1960)
- 1854 – The Orange River Convention was signed in Bloemfontein, with the United Kingdom agreeing to recognise the independence of the Orange Free State in present-day South Africa.
- 1886 – American inventor Charles Martin Hall discovered an inexpensive method of producing aluminium (sample pictured).
- 1944 – In response to an insurgency in Chechnya, the Soviet Union began the forced deportation of the native Chechen and Ingush of North Caucasus.
- 1987 – SN 1987A, a supernova in the Large Magellanic Cloud, was observed from Earth.
- 2021 – Caused by gang rivalries, riots in four Ecuadorian prisons resulted in the deaths of 79 inmates.
- al-Zafir (b. 1133)
- Allan MacLeod Cormack (b. 1924)
- Edward Elgar (d. 1934)
- Shiena Nishizawa (b. 1997)
From today's featured list
The Nuovo Award is given at the Independent Games Festival (IGF), an annual event that takes place during the Game Developers Conference, one of the largest gatherings of the indie video game industry. The award is given to honor "abstract, shortform, and unconventional game development which advances the medium and the way we think about games". It was designed as a way for art games to compete with traditional indie games. In the thirteen years since its debut, 99 games have been nominated as finalists, while 79 games have been chosen as honorable mentions. Fifteen games have won the Nuovo Award, the first being the platformer Between (2009), developed by Jason Rohrer (pictured), while the most recent game to be awarded is the role-playing video game Betrayal at Club Low (2023), developed by Cosmo D. (Full list...)
Today's featured picture
Sergey Stepnyak-Kravchinsky (1851–1895) was a Ukrainian revolutionary mainly known for assassinating General Nikolai Mezentsov, the chief of Russia's Special Corps of Gendarmes and the head of the country's secret police, with a dagger in the streets of Saint Petersburg in 1878. After the killing, he exposed himself to danger by remaining in Russia, and he left the country in the fall of 1878. He settled for a short time in Switzerland, then a favourite resort of revolutionary leaders, and after a few years came to London. He was already known in England for Underground Russia, which had been published in London in 1882. The book was followed by a number of other works on the condition of the Russian peasantry, on nihilism, and on the conditions of life in Russia. Russian anarchist leader Peter Kropotkin, who knew Stepnyak personally, testified to his character: "He was a stranger to the feeling of fear; it was as foreign to him as colors are to a person born blind. He was ready to risk his life every moment. Egotism as well as narrow partisanship was unknown to him; he believed that in a movement to defeat oppression there are always parties and factions with differences of opinion. ... He also could not understand why there should be strife among the various parties, since all are involved in the struggle against a common enemy." This photograph of Stepnyak was taken in the 1880s. Photograph credit: Elliott & Fry; restored by Adam Cuerden
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