Wikipedia:Today's featured list/July 2012
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July 2
UEFA European Football Championship finals take place every four years. The final is the last match of the European Championship, and the result determines which men's national association football team is declared European champion. The fourteen finals to date have produced five drawn matches, the eventual winners of which have been determined variously by replay, extra time, penalty shoot-out or golden goal. The winners are awarded a replica of the trophy (pictured). The winners of the first final were the Soviet Union, who defeated Yugoslavia 2–1 in Paris, after extra time. Germany and Spain are the most successful teams in the history of the tournament, winning three times each. Spain won the most recent final, for the second consecutive time, on 1 July 2012 in Kiev, defeating Italy 4–0. (Full list...)
July 9
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The 60 municipalities of Lithuania are sub-divided into over 500 smaller groups, known as elderships and are grouped into 10 counties. These municipalities, elderships, and counties make up the three layers of Lithuania's administrative divisions. At the end of its tenure as a Soviet Socialist Republic, Lithuania's administrative divisions consisted of 44 regions, 12 cities, 80 towns, 19 settlements, and 426 rural districts. The reform of this system was an immediate concern for the new government. The Constitution of Lithuania, ratified in 1992, delegated the power of establishing future administrative units to the Lithuanian Parliament. The current system of a set of municipalities under 10 counties was codified by 1995. Several changes were made in 2000, resulting in 60 municipalities, each of which has its own coat of arms (example pictured). Municipal councilors are directly elected every four years. The councilors then elect the municipality's mayor. (Full list...)
July 16
The bibliography of George Orwell includes journalism, essays, books, and fiction written by the British writer Eric Arthur Blair (pictured), pen name George Orwell. Orwell first achieved widespread acclaim with his fictional novella Animal Farm and cemented his place in history as a novelist with the publication of Nineteen Eighty-Four shortly before his death. While fiction accounts for a small fraction of his total output, these two novels are his best-selling works, having sold almost fifty million copies in sixty-two languages by 2007—more than any other pair of books by a twentieth-century author. In addition, Orwell wrote book-length investigations of poverty in Britain in the form of Down and Out in Paris and London and The Road to Wigan Pier and one of the first retrospectives on the Spanish Civil War in Homage to Catalonia. The impact of Orwell's large corpus is manifested in additions to the Western canon and the adoption of "Orwellian" as a description of totalitarian societies. (Full list...)
July 23
A total of 121 Puerto Rican soldiers were among the 8,200 people from the United States Armed Forces listed as missing in action during the Korean War. This total does not include people of Puerto Rican descent who were born in the U.S. mainland. It was during the Korean War that Puerto Ricans suffered the most casualties as members of an all-Hispanic volunteer unit: the 65th Infantry Regiment. One of the problems the unit faced was the language difference; the common foot soldier spoke only Spanish, while the commanding officers were mostly English-speaking. The Battle of Outpost Kelly (illustration pictured) accounted for 73 of the men missing in action from the total of 121. Out of the 73 MIAs suffered by the regiment in the month of September, 50 of them occurred on the same day: September 18. All 121 men served within the ranks of the United States Army with the sole exception of Ramón Núñez-Juárez, who served in the Marines. Their names are inscribed in El Monumento de la Recordación located in San Juan, Puerto Rico. (Full list...)
July 30
Arnold Schwarzenegger's acting career began primarily with small roles in film and television. Since then, he has appeared mainly in science fiction, action, and comedy films. In addition to films and television, he has appeared in music videos for AC/DC, Bon Jovi, and Guns N' Roses. Schwarzenegger has been a primary character in two film franchises: as Conan in the Conan series and as The Terminator in the Terminator series. Other roles include Ben Richards in The Running Man, Douglas Quaid in Total Recall, Jack Slater in Last Action Hero, Major Alan "Dutch" Schaeffer in Predator, and Harry Tasker in True Lies. In Stay Hungry, one of his first roles, he won a Golden Globe Award for Best Acting Debut in a Motion Picture. He has also been nominated for various awards for his work in Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Junior, and True Lies. (Full list...)