Wikipedia:Main Page history/2017 March 28

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From today's featured article

Ian Smith served in the British Royal Air Force during the Second World War. The future Rhodesian Prime Minister was posted to No. 237 (Rhodesia) Squadron, then stationed in the Middle East, in late 1942. He flew in the Western Desert in 1943 until a crash during a night takeoff resulted in facial disfigurements and a broken jaw. Following reconstructive plastic surgery to his face, other operations, and five months' convalescence, he rejoined No. 237 Squadron. In June 1944, when his plane was shot down by flak in northern Italy, he parachuted into the Ligurian Alps, behind German lines. He spent three months working with the local resistance movement before trekking westwards across the Maritime Alps to join up with the Allied forces that had just invaded southern France. He continued to fly combat missions until Germany surrendered. In 1965, Rhodesia's long history of military support for the mother country was one of the factors that led to the Smith administration's Unilateral Declaration of Independence. (Full article...)

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Samuel Noble Monument

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In the news

Volutus cloud formation

Carrie Lam wins the Hong Kong Chief Executive election, becoming the territory's first female leader.
Former Russian MP and government critic Denis Voronenkov is shot dead in Kiev.
The World Meteorological Organization adds twelve new cloud types (including volutus, pictured) to the International Cloud Atlas, the first update to the official cloud classification scheme since 1986.
An attack at the Palace of Westminster, London, results in five people dead and fifty others injured.

On this day...

March 28: Serfs Emancipation Day in Tibet

Fabre Hydravion

1802 – German astronomer Heinrich Wilhelm Matthias Olbers discovered 2 Pallas, the second asteroid known to man.
1862 – American Civil War: An invasion of the New Mexico Territory by the Confederate States Army was halted at the Battle of Glorieta Pass.
1910 – Near Martigues, France, French aviator Henri Fabre's Fabre Hydravion (pictured) became the first seaplane to take off from water under its own power.
2003 – Invasion of Iraq: In a friendly fire incident, two members of the United States Air Force attacked the United Kingdom's Blues and Royals regiment, killing one soldier and injuring five.

James Brudenell (d. 1868) · Ernst Lindemann (b. 1894) · Lady Gaga (b. 1986)

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Today's featured picture

The Submission of Prince Dipo Negoro to General De Kock is an oil painting on canvas painted by Nicolaas Pieneman between 1830 and 1835. It depicts General Hendrik Merkus de Kock's capture of Prince Diponegoro in 1830, which signaled the end of the Java War (1825–1830). The painting, commissioned by De Kock, shows Diponegoro abandoning his followers and submitting peacefully, in what the art historian Werner Krauss describes as recognition that "de Kock's stern action is for the best of the Javanese".

Painting: Nicolaas Pieneman

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