Wikipedia:Main Page history/2020 April 19

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From today's featured article

Northern giant mouse lemur

The giant mouse lemurs (genus Mirza) are primates native to Madagascar, like all other lemurs. The two described species, the northern (pictured) and Coquerel's giant mouse lemurs, are found in the western dry deciduous forests, Sambirano valley and Sahamalaza Peninsula. In 1870, British zoologist John Edward Gray assigned them to Mirza, but the classification was not widely accepted until the 1990s, following the revival of the genus by American paleoanthropologist Ian Tattersall in 1982. Giant mouse lemurs weigh approximately 300 g (11 oz) and have a long, bushy tail. They sleep in nests during the day and forage alone at night for fruit, tree gum, insects, and small vertebrates. The northern species has the largest testicles relative to body size of any living primate. Predators of giant mouse lemurs include the Madagascar buzzard, Madagascar owl, fossa, and narrow-striped mongoose. Both Mirza species are endangered due to habitat destruction and hunting. (Full article...)

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Did you know ...

Easter eggs from Kateryna Skarzhynska's collection

... that Kateryna Skarzhynska founded Ukraine's first private museum, housing archaeological artifacts, scientific books, and her collection of more than 2,100 Ukrainian Easter eggs (examples pictured)?
... that 722 graduates of the M. V. Frunze Military Academy received the title of Hero of the Soviet Union between 1934 and 1988?
... that George Dudley threatened to withdraw Canada from ice hockey at the Olympic Games over the definition of an amateur?
... that the Maas Brothers store at Port Charlotte Town Center was never opened due to the bankruptcy of its parent company Allied Stores?
... that the 2019 Ukrainian teen drama Early Swallows was responsible for a 600-percent increase in calls to a mental-health helpline?
... that when the College of the Pacific started a radio station, it had to settle for the call sign KCVN because a police facility held the rights to KCOP?
... that Austrian industrialist Hans Lauda was critical of his grandson Niki's Formula One ambitions, as he believed that "a Lauda should be on the economic pages of the newspaper, not the sports pages"?
... that in the film Dick Johnson Is Dead, director Kirsten Johnson has her elderly father act out different ways – some of them violent "accidents" – in which he could die?

In the news

Coronavirus pandemic

Severe weather in the Southeastern United States

Thirty-eight people are killed in a tornado outbreak (satellite image shown) in the Southeastern United States.
The High Court of Australia quashes the conviction of Cardinal George Pell for child sex abuse and orders his acquittal.
Cyclone Harold impacts the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Fiji and Tonga, killing at least thirty people.

On this day

April 19: Easter (Eastern Christianity, 2020); Divine Mercy Sunday (Catholicism, Anglicanism; 2020); feast day of Saint Ælfheah of Canterbury (Catholicism, Anglicanism)

Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building after the Oklahoma City bombing

AD 65 – The freedman Milichus betrayed Gaius Calpurnius Piso's plot to kill Roman emperor Nero, leading to the arrest of the conspirators.
1713 – With no living male heirs, Charles VI, Holy Roman Emperor, issued the Pragmatic Sanction, which allowed daughters to inherit the Habsburg hereditary possessions.
1903 – Anti-Jewish riots broke out in Kishinev, the capital of Bessarabia Governorate, causing the death of nearly 50 Jews and focusing worldwide attention on the persecution of Jews in Russia.
1984 – "Advance Australia Fair", written by Scottish-born composer Peter Dodds McCormick, officially replaced "God Save the Queen" as Australia's national anthem.
1995 – A truck bomb destroyed much of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building (damage pictured) in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, killing 168 people and injuring more than 680 others.

Jagat Gosain (d. 1619)
Elizabeth Dilling (b. 1894)
Michel Roux (b. 1941)

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Today's featured picture

Hendrik Voogd (1768–1839) was a Dutch painter and printmaker who spent his active life in Italy. He was known as the "Dutch Claude", because some of his landscape paintings resembled those of the French painter Claude Lorrain, whose landscapes were often bathed in golden light.

This picture is an 1807 oil-on-canvas painting by Voogd, entitled Italian Landscape with Umbrella Pines, depicting the gardens of the Villa Borghese in Rome in the late afternoon. People can be seen strolling amongst the trees, which stand out sharply against the sky and cast long shadows across the lawns. In the foreground, an artist is shown at work beside a fallen tree. The painting is now in the collection of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.

Painting credit: Hendrik Voogd

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