Wikipedia:Main Page history/2017 March 24

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From today's featured article

The Piano Concerto No. 24 in C minor, K. 491, is a concerto by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart for keyboard (period fortepiano pictured) and orchestra. He composed it in the winter of 1785–86 and completed it on 24 March 1786. He played the solo part in the premiere in early April that year at the Burgtheater in Vienna. The work is one of only two minor-key piano concertos by Mozart, the other being No. 20 in D Minor. It features the largest array of instruments of any Mozart concerto: strings, woodwinds including oboes and clarinets, horns, trumpets and timpani. The concerto consists of three movements. The first, Allegro, is in sonata form and is longer than any opening movement of Mozart's earlier concertos. The second movement, Larghetto, features a strikingly simple principal theme, and the final Allegretto presents a theme followed by eight variations. The work is one of Mozart's most advanced compositions in the concerto genre. Early admirers included Ludwig van Beethoven and Johannes Brahms. The musicologist Arthur Hutchings considered it to be Mozart's greatest piano concerto. (Full article...)

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Did you know...

INSV Tarini

... that this August, an all-woman crew plans to circumnavigate the globe on the Indian Navy's second ocean-going sailboat, INSV Tarini (pictured)?
... that Zeynab Begum was one of the most influential princesses of Iran's Safavid dynasty?
... that Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery is buried in the graveyard of the Church of the Holy Cross in Binsted?
... that the American contralto Margarethe Bence appeared as Marcellina at the Salzburg Festival, as Erda in Bayreuth, and in a premiere at the Schwetzingen Festival?
... that the extinct Polynesian Dog never became feral because of the scarcity of food in the forests of Polynesia?
... that Robert Lyster Thornton returned to Berkeley in 1942 to assist with the development of the calutron?
... that the spotted imperial pigeon's specific name carola is derived from the name of a daughter of the ornithologist Charles Lucien Bonaparte?
... that Edward Hutchinson Synge described a theory for a near-field scanning optical microscope in a letter to Albert Einstein fifty years before various corporations sought patents on the technology?

In the news

The Palace of Westminster

A terrorist attack at the Palace of Westminster (pictured), London, results in five people dead and more than forty injured.
The United States defeats Puerto Rico to win the World Baseball Classic.
French mathematician Yves Meyer is awarded the Abel Prize for his work on the mathematical theory of wavelets.
American guitarist, singer, and rock and roll pioneer Chuck Berry dies at the age of 90.
An airstrike on a mosque in the rebel-held al-Jinah village near Aleppo kills at least forty-two people and injures more than one hundred others.
The VVD, led by incumbent Prime Minister Mark Rutte, wins the most seats in the Dutch general election, but the governing coalition loses its majority.

On this day...

March 24: World Tuberculosis Day

Exxon Valdez aground

1860 – Rōnin samurai of the Mito Domain assassinated Japanese Chief Minister Ii Naosuke, upset with his role in the opening of Japan to foreign powers.
1882 – German physician Robert Koch announced the discovery of Mycobacterium tuberculosis, a bacterium that causes tuberculosis.
1934 – The Tydings–McDuffie Act came into effect, which provided for self-government of the Philippines and for Filipino independence from the United States after a period of ten years.
1989 – The tanker Exxon Valdez (pictured) spilled 10.8 million US gallons (260,000 bbl; 41,000 m³) of oil into Prince William Sound, Alaska, causing one of the most devastating man-made maritime environmental disasters.
2008 – The Bhutan Peace and Prosperity Party, led by Jigme Thinley, won 45 out of 47 seats in the National Assembly of Bhutan in the country's first-ever general election.

William Morris (b. 1834) · Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (d. 1882) · David Irving (b. 1938)

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From today's featured list

Meryl Streep

American actress Meryl Streep has had an extensive career in film, television, and stage. She made her stage debut in 1975 with The Public Theater production of Trelawny of the Wells. A supporting role in the war drama The Deer Hunter (1978) proved to be a breakthrough for Streep and she received her first Academy Award nomination for it. She won the award the following year for playing a troubled wife in the top-grossing drama Kramer vs. Kramer (1979). Streep established herself as a leading Hollywood actress in the 1980s. She played dual roles in the period drama The French Lieutenant's Woman (1981), and starred as a Polish holocaust survivor in Sophie's Choice (1982), winning the Best Actress Oscar for the latter. Her portrayal of Margaret Thatcher in the biopic The Iron Lady (2011) earned her another Academy Award for Best Actress. The starring role of Florence Foster Jenkins in the 2016 comedy-drama film of the same name garnered Streep her 20th Oscar nomination, more than any actor or actress in history. (Full list...)

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Today's featured picture

The Dance Lesson is an oil on canvas painting by the French artist Edgar Degas created around 1879. The first of a series of paintings by Degas in a horizontal, frieze-like format, it draws some inspiration from Japanese prints in its positioning of dancers and musical instruments. It is currently kept at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.

Painting: Edgar Degas

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