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Orbital Science: Now you're thinking with explosions

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By The Herald, Adam Cuerden, and Hafspajen
This Signpost "Featured content" report covers material promoted from 10 to 16 November 2014. Anything in quotation marks is taken from the respective articles and lists; see their page histories for attribution.

Four featured articles were promoted this week.

File:Paddlefish USFWS.jpg
This American paddlefish comes from a 300-million-year-old lineage (Yep: older than the dinos), and is now a featured article.

Four featured lists were promoted this week.

The Saltford Brass Mill, which dates from the 1720s, is one of many scheduled monuments in Bath and North East Somerset.
A mass grave from the Spanish Civil War discovered in a recent excavation in Estépar, Burgos; as photographed by Wikipedian Mario Modesto Mata. These sort of documentary images are very valuable since, naturally, the general goal is to return the bodies to their families for burial after the documentation of the murders are complete, meaning there's only a short amount of time for photographers to step in and document history.

Eleven featured pictures were promoted this week.

Winslow Homer's The Gulf Stream
Wikipedian Francis C. Franklin's photograph of a great tit.
Roses by Vincent van Gogh
Toompea Castle, as photographed by Abrget47j.
  • The Raven (created by Gustave Doré, restored by Lise Broer, nominated by Crisco 1492) "And the raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting / On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door; / And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon that is dreaming, / And the lamp-light o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor; / And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor / Shall be lifted—nevermore!" Gustave Doré was a master of eerie woodblock engravings, and here pairs with probably the only horror poet anyone is likely to have ever read, Edgar Allan Poe.
  • Bathsheba (created by Willem Drost, nominated by Hafspajen) The Books of Kings are probably the most fun parts of the Bible (or Torah). You probably won't get that much spiritual enlightenment from them, but if you want some damn good stories... This one's a rather nasty little piece of trickery. The theoretically holy and wonderful King David sees Bathsheba bathing on the roof of her house from his palace, and falls in love lust with her, and seduces her. But she is married to his friend, Uriah the Hittite, currently loyally serving him as an officer in the army. David tries to call Uriah back, and get him to have sex with his wife while there's still time to pass off David's baby as his - but Uriah is too busy trying to serve David as a soldier than to focus on his wife. Finally, David sends Uriah out to the front lines, ordering him to be put in the heat of the battle, and he's killed. So David takes Bathsheba as his wife. Well, one of his wives. One of David's many, many wives. He repents eventually, but still... Anyway, King Solomon, his son from this marriage, was his successor on his throne, was known as an intelligent and wise ruler. He presumably didn't get it from his father.
  • The Gulf Stream (created by Winslow Homer, nominated by Crisco 1492) An 1899 oil painting by Winslow Homer, The Gulf Stream shows a man in a small rudderless fishing boat struggling against the waves of the rough sea. The painting has been described as "a particularly enigmatic and tantalizing episode, a marine puzzle that floats forever in a region of unsolved mysteries", but, at one point, sick of the inquiries about the fate of the man in the painting, he wrote, "You can tell these ladies that the unfortunate negro who now is so dazed & parboiled, will be rescued & returned to his friends and home, & ever after live happily."
  • Mass grave from the Spanish Civil War (created and nominated by Mario Modesto Mata) One of several mass graves from the start of the Spanish Civil War discovered in an excavation from July–August 2014 at Estépar (Burgos). The grave contains twenty-six republicans who were assassinated in August-September 1936 by fascists.
  • Lars Kruse (created by Michael Ancher, nominated by Crisco 1492) Noted for his daring rescues of shipwreck victims, chief life-boatman Lars Kruse was a fisherman from Skagen, Denmark who rescued about two hundred people during his lifetime. Lars Kruse was depicted in several paintings (including this one) by Michael Ancher of the Skagen painters, as well as featuring in poems and novels; in particular, he had his heroism and unfair treatment by the authorities in (initially) refusing to recognize said heroism celebrated in a poem and prose account by the Danish poet and dramatist Holger Drachmann.
  • Christ taking Leave of his Mother (created by Albrecht Altdorfer, nominated by Hafspajen) Christ taking leave of his Mother is a wonderful Northern Renaissance painting. Albrecht Altdorfer (1480 – 1538) was a German painter, engraver and architect in Regensburg. Along with Lucas Cranach the Elder he was one of the main representatives of the Danube School, painters who started presenting subjects against landscape backgrounds, and this was once upon a time the beginning of Western landscape painting as an art form. The small people in the lower right corner, at the feet of the bigger figures, are reminiscent of the people of Lilliput from Gulliver's Travels or possibly the series Land of the Giants - they are the donors who didn't want to be depicted as big as the other, sacred figures.
  • Explosion of Orbital Sciences CRS Flight 3 (created by NASA/Joel Kowsky, nominated by Crisco 1492) The currently-unexplained explosion of Orbital Sciences CRS Flight 3, an automated craft attempting to deliver supplies to the International Space Station. As it was an unmanned craft, no-one was injured or killed in the explosion.
  • Great tit (created by Francis C. Franklin, nominated by The Herald) The great tit is a roughly sparrow-sized bird common throughout Europe, the Middle East, and Central and North Asia, with a yellow stomach, olive back, and black and white head. After last week, I'm refraining from naughty puns, but feel free to make your own now. The great tit is quite a vocal bird, and has up to 40 types of calls, from soft single notes such as "pit", "spick", or "chit", to a loud "tink" used by adult males as an alarm or in territorial disputes. One of the most familiar is a "teacher, teacher", often likened to a squeaky wheelbarrow wheel, which is used in proclaiming ownership of a territory.
  • Toompea Castle (created by Abrget47j, nominated by Yakikaki) Toompea Castle, in Talinn, Estonia is one of the major tourist attractions of the city, and also hosts the Parliament of Estonia. A fortress since at least the 9th century, the castle has seen Danish crusaders, the Order of the Brethren of the Sword, and the Teutonic Order, before being converted into an administrative center after the Livonian War. Oh, and apparently, during the time those Danish crusaders were trying to take it over, God dropped a flag down to spur the Danes on. There are, however, doubts as to the veracity of this. Either way the Dannebrog is the special pride of The Danish.
  • Still Life: Vase with Pink Roses (created by Vincent van Gogh, nominated by Crisco 1492) People think about van Gogh as a painter who painted with strong colours, oranges, yellows, reds, sunflowers and fields that are glowing in the sun. But he could be a very sensitive and delicate painter too, using pastel colors, sky blues and delicate pinks. Or, like in this painting cream and whites with soft light greens. Painted near the end of his stay in the Saint-Paul Asylum, Saint-Rémy in 1889-90, this still life is usually interpreted as reflecting Vincent van Gogh's optimism for the future. He would be dead from suicide less than three months later. The painting was valued at $60 million when it was gifted to the National Gallery of Art by Pamela Harriman in memory of her husband, an irony of fate - van Gogh hardly ever sold a painting while he was alive.
  • Selfoss (created by Martin Falbisoner, nominated by EuroCarGT) The river Jökulsá á Fjöllum is the second longest river in Iceland, and, as it approaches the coast, it drops down a series of waterfalls, to reach the ocean, the Selfoss being one of these, and Dettifoss, and Hafragilsfoss the others. Jökulsá á Fjöllum flows from the melting Vatnajökull glacier, and flows through the former Jökulsárgljúfur National Park (now part of Vatnajökull National Park), which was formed by the explosion of a volcano situated directly beneath the river. The river is located in the northeast of Iceland and forms the eastern boundary of Ódáðahraun, a wild and enchanting, untamed landscape of lava field that makes one feel this is the way the world looked when it was created.
Selfoss, a waterfall in Iceland on the river Jökulsá á Fjöllum, as photographed by Martin Falbisoner.

One featured topic was promoted this week.

  • Council of Lithuania (nominated by Neelix, with initial work by M.K.) In the closing years of the First World War, Lithuania, which had been part of the Russian Empire, found itself invaded by Germans. Paradoxically, this was, on the whole, a good thing for Lithuania: Lithuania had been trying to gain independence for years, and Germany didn't want to upset the Russians by merely grabbing their territory, but could form an alliance with an independent Lithuania. They allowed the Vilnius Conference on independence, hoping that the conference would come down firmly on independence and a closer relationship with Germany, but the conference only came down for independence, the closer relationship dependent on Germany recognizing them as an independent state. The conference created the Council of Lithuania, formed from a group of men of a variety of social classes and positions, and they were set the task of negotiating terms, but it wasn't until Germany finally lost the First World War in 1918 that the Lithuanians were finally in sufficiently good of a position to push through the independence they wanted. World War II and reconquest by Russia lurked in the country's future, but, for the time, Lithuania was free.
The twenty initial members of the Council of Lithuania. The council sits at the center of a new featured topic.


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