Wikipedia:Main Page history/2017 June 27

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From today's featured article

The Well of Loneliness is a 1928 lesbian novel by the British author Radclyffe Hall that follows the life of Stephen Gordon, an Englishwoman from an upper-class family. Her "sexual inversion" (homosexuality) is apparent from an early age. She finds love with Mary Llewellyn, whom she meets while serving as an ambulance driver in World War I, but their happiness together is marred by social isolation and rejection. The novel portrays inversion as a natural, God-given state and makes an explicit plea: "Give us also the right to our existence". Although its only sexual reference consists of the words "and that night, they were not divided", a British court judged it obscene because it defended "unnatural practices between women". In the United States the book survived legal challenges. Publicity over The Well's legal battles increased the visibility of lesbians in British and American culture. Gordon's expressions of self-hatred have been faulted for inspiring shame, but the book was for decades the best-known lesbian novel in English, and often the first source of information about lesbianism that young people could find. (Full article...)

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Did you know...

Miriam Makeba

... that South African singer and anti-apartheid activist Miriam Makeba (pictured) was followed by the CIA and the FBI after she married Black Panther Stokely Carmichael?
... that the toxin found in the skin of the hooded pitohui, a bird from New Guinea, is the same as that found in poison arrow frogs?
... that American pediatrician L. Emmett Holt Jr. received the Czechoslovak Order of the White Lion, the Finnish Mannerheim Cross, and the Order of the Star of Jordan?
... that "Dies sind die heilgen Zehn Gebot" is a hymnal version of the Ten Commandments by Martin Luther?
... that German footballer Lewis Holtby was eligible to represent England through his paternal lineage?
... that the South Korean government tried to metricate the country unsuccessfully four times before finally criminalizing traditional Korean units in 2007?
... that Alfred Starbird directed the Operation Dominic nuclear tests which "significantly enhanced the security of the nation and the free world"?
... that the Thunderbolt was damaged by lightning and then destroyed by a hurricane?

In the news

An oil truck explosion in Ahmedpur East, Pakistan, kills at least 150 people and injures more than 100 others.
The World Health Organization estimates that 200,000 people in Yemen have been infected with cholera.
At least 10 people are killed and more than 90 others are missing following a landslide in Sichuan, China.
In Pakistan, at least 80 people are killed and more than 200 others are injured in multiple bombings in Quetta and Parachinar.
The cricket teams of Ireland and Afghanistan are awarded Test status by the ICC.

On this day...

June 27

Tanaka Giichi

1556 – The thirteen Stratford Martyrs were burned at the stake near London for their Protestant beliefs.
1864 – American Civil War: Union Army General William T. Sherman's frontal assault against the Army of Tennessee failed, but that did not stop Sherman's advance on Atlanta.
1905 – The crew of the Russian battleship Potemkin began a mutiny against their oppressive officers.
1927 – Prime Minister of Japan Tanaka Giichi (pictured) led a conference to discuss Japan's plans for China, out of which came the Tanaka Memorial, a strategic document detailing these plans (now believed to be a forgery).
2007 – As a result of an ongoing conflict between drug dealers and police in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro, a large military and civil police operation killed 19 people and injured several others.

Eugenia Washington (b. 1838) · Helen Keller (b. 1880) · Nekima Levy-Pounds (b. 1976)

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A male (top) and female rusty-naped pitta (Hydrornis oatesi) in Mae Wong National Park, Thailand. This species of bird in the family Pittidae was described by amateur ornithologist Allan Octavian Hume in 1790. It is found in East and Southeast Asian subtropical or tropical moist lowland forests, montane forests, and bamboo forests.

Photograph: JJ Harrison

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