Wikipedia:Main Page history/2016 January 19

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From today's featured article

Morris in 1979

Arthur Morris (1922–2015) was an Australian cricketer who played 46 Test matches between 1946 and 1955. He is best known as a prominent member of the "Invincibles", a team that went undefeated on their tour of England in 1948. In his teens, Morris became the first player ever to score two centuries on his first-class debut. After serving in the Australian Army during the Second World War, he made his Test debut against England. He scored a century in his third match and two more hundreds in the following Test, becoming only the second Australian to score a hundred in each innings of an Ashes Test. By 1950, he was Australia's vice-captain and had amassed nine Test centuries with a batting average over 65. Thereafter his form declined, and his career ended after his first wife became terminally ill in 1955. In later life, Morris served as a trustee of the Sydney Cricket Ground for over twenty years. Selected in the Australian Cricket Board's Team of the Century in 2000 and inducted into the Australian Cricket Hall of Fame in 2001, he is widely regarded as one of Australia's most successful left-handed batsmen. (Full article...)

Part of the Australian cricket team in England in 1948 series, one of Wikipedia's featured topics.

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Did you know...

Space-filling model of the benzylamine molecule

... that the hydrochloride salt of benzylamine (molecular model pictured) was given to NASA astronaut John Glenn as a treatment for motion sickness in the Mercury-Atlas 6 mission?
... that the Ornithological Dictionary; or Alphabetical Synopsis of British Birds is George Montagu's best-known work, and the one that established his reputation as a pioneer of British ornithology?
... that Rattling Run is a Coldwater Fishery, but had no fish as of 2001?
... that literary scholar Hana Wirth-Nesher grew up with her father reading to her in Yiddish, her mother and grandmother speaking to her in German, and her friends conversing with her in English?
... that the Lindbergh Beacon atop Los Angeles City Hall was deactivated after the attack on Pearl Harbor and not fully restored and reactivated until 2001?
... that Rakel Wärmländer's real-life friend, actress Josephine Bornebusch, played her friend in the film Love and Lemons?
... that in the early 1940s, the New York Yankees used the Salamanca Erie Railroad station as a rest stop because of a delayed game with the Cleveland Indians?
... that dak bungalows are "about as handsome as a stack of hay"?

In the news

Tsai Ing-wen

The International Atomic Energy Agency affirms Iran has met its obligations under the JCPOA, triggering the removal of some sanctions.
Tsai Ing-wen (pictured) is elected the first female President of Taiwan, and her Democratic Progressive Party wins a majority in the Legislative Yuan.
AQIM militants kill at least twenty-eight people in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso.
Scientists describe ASASSN-15lh, the brightest known superluminous supernova ever detected, shining up to fifty times brighter than the entire Milky Way.
Hurricane Alex becomes the first recorded Atlantic hurricane to form in the month of January since 1938.
Chilean architect Alejandro Aravena wins the Pritzker Architecture Prize.

Ongoing events:
- European migrant crisis
Recent deaths:

On this day...

January 19: Theophany (Julian calendar)

John Wilkes

649 – War against the Western Turks: The forces of Kucha surrendered after a siege led by Tang Dynasty general Ashina She'er, establishing Tang control over the northern Tarim Basin in what is now Xinjiang.
1764 – English radical and politician John Wilkes (pictured) was expelled from the British Parliament and declared an outlaw for seditious libel.
1853 – Giuseppe Verdi's opera Il trovatore was first performed at the Teatro Apollo in Rome.
1996 – A tank barge and a tug grounded on a beach in South Kingstown, Rhode Island, US, spilling an estimated 828,000 US gallons (3,130,000 l) of home heating oil.
2006 – In the deadliest aviation accident in Slovak history, an Antonov An-24 aircraft operated by the Slovak Air Force crashed in northern Hungary, killing 42 of the 43 people on board.

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Today's featured picture

The Pacific golden plover (Pluvialis fulva) is a medium-sized migratory plover. It breeds in the Arctic tundra from northernmost Asia into western Alaska and winters in south Asia and Australasia.

Photograph: JJ Harrison

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