Wikipedia:Main Page history/2018 January 29

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From today's featured article

In the Baltimore railroad strike of 1877, at least ten people were killed and more than 150 were injured. The unrest in Baltimore, Maryland, was part of a national railroad strike, following the global depression and economic downturns of the mid-1870s. On July 16, when the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad (B&O) scheduled 10 percent wage reductions, strikes broke out. Violence erupted in Baltimore on July 20, and police and soldiers of the Maryland National Guard clashed with crowds of thousands gathered throughout the city. In response, President Rutherford B. Hayes ordered federal troops to Baltimore, local officials recruited as many as 500 additional police, and two new national guard regiments were formed. Peace was restored two days later. Negotiations between strikers and the B&O were unsuccessful, and most strikers quit rather than return to work at reduced wages. The company easily found workers to replace the strikers, and rail traffic resumed on July 29 under the protection of the military and police. (Full article...)

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Did you know...

Hardenbergia comptoniana

... that the seed pods of Hardenbergia comptoniana (flowers pictured) make an audible 'pop' as they release the seed?
... that after contracting diphtheria, John Hunt believed he was one of the last cases in England to have his tonsils painted with cocaine and then removed by guillotine?
... that the Jaguar multi-stage sounding rocket was designed to be launched using a toss bombing maneuver from a B-57 bomber?
... that a Let's Save Togo protest rally in August 2012 called for a week-long sex strike by women to encourage men to oppose Togolese President Faure Gnassingbé?
... that prior to serving as executive fashion director for Cosmopolitan and Seventeen, and as a judge for Project Runway: Junior, Aya Kanai considered careers in puppetry and fine art?
... that 50 million trees could be planted to form the Northern Forest in England?
... that Major General Miles Graham was Monty's logistics supremo in both North Africa and North-West Europe during the Second World War?
... that passengers traveling to the 1939 New York World's Fair via the World's Fair subway line paid the standard five-cent fare to board, but had to pay the fare again on arrival?

In the news

Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi

In Yemen, separatists from the Southern Transitional Council seize government buildings in Aden from President Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi's (pictured) forces.
Miloš Zeman is re-elected for a second term in the Czech presidential election.
A bombing in Kabul, Afghanistan, kills at least 103 people and injures more than 200 others.
In Miryang, South Korea, a hospital fire kills 37 people and injures more than 130 others.
Chinese scientists announce the creation of two identical monkeys, the first primates to be cloned using the SCNT technique.
The former team doctor for USA Gymnastics, Larry Nassar, is sentenced to at least 40 years in prison for sexually abusing more than 150 gymnasts.

On this day...

January 29

Illustration of The Raven by John Tenniel

1845 – American poet Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven" (illustrated) appeared in the The Evening Mirror, its first publication attributed to Poe.
1856 – Queen Victoria established the Victoria Cross, originally to recognise acts of valour by British military personnel during the Crimean War.
1943 – World War II: The Battle of Rennell Island, the last major naval engagement between the United States Navy and the Imperial Japanese Navy during the Guadalcanal Campaign, began.
1991 – The Battle of Khafji, the first major ground engagement of the Gulf War, began with Iraq's invasion of the Saudi Arabian city of Khafji.
2017 – A lone gunman carried out a mass shooting at a mosque in Quebec City, Canada, killing six people and injuring nineteen others.

Salih ibn Wasif (d. 870) · Frederick Delius (b. 1862) · Geraldine Pittman Woods (b. 1921)

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From today's featured list

Jacques Rivette

French film director, screenwriter and film critic Jacques Rivette wrote and directed twenty feature films, eight short films and a documentary. Rivette was a member of the French New Wave. In 1956 Rivette made the short film Le Coup du Berger, which François Truffaut credited as enacting the New Wave movement. His feature film debut Paris Belongs to Us was a key part of the movement. In 1969 he established his cinematic style with L'Amour fou, where he worked with large groups of actors and lengthy improvisation. This technique led to the thirteen-hour Out 1. Some of his other films include Celine and Julie Go Boating, Gang of Four and La Belle Noiseuse. Many of his films have long running times; Rivette edited shorter versions of five of them and considered some to be entirely new films with different meanings. (Full list...)

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Today's featured picture

Saint Basil's Cathedral is a church in Red Square in Moscow, Russia. It was built from 1555 to 1561 on orders from Ivan the Terrible and commemorates the capture of Kazan and Astrakhan. The city's tallest building until the completion of the Ivan the Great Bell Tower in 1600, the original building contained eight side churches arranged around the ninth, central church of Intercession; the tenth church was erected in 1588 over the grave of venerated local saint Vasily (Basil). Although the Bolsheviks considered demolishing the church in the 1930s, it was spared. Since 1991 it has housed a branch of the State Historical Museum and hosted occasional church services.

Photograph: Petar Milošević

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