Wikipedia:Main Page history/2020 March 12

From today's featured article

Ethiopian historiography embodies the ancient, medieval, early modern and modern disciplines of recording the history of Ethiopia. Ethiopian historical writing can be traced back to the Kingdom of Aksum (c. AD 100 – c. 940). The writing of history became an established genre in Ethiopian literature during the early Solomonic dynasty (1270–1974), when written histories were usually in the form of royal biographies, dynastic chronicles, hagiographic literature and universal histories in the form of annals. These reinforced the genealogical traditions of Ethiopia's rulers, who claimed descent from Solomon. Modern Ethiopian historiography was developed by native Ethiopians and by Hiob Ludolf (1624–1704), the German orientalist. The traditionalist Heruy Wolde Selassie (1878–1938) employed Western historiographic methods. Historiography of the 20th century focused largely on the Abyssinian Crisis of 1935 and the Second Italo-Ethiopian War. (Full article...)

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Alyssa Healy

Mahatma Gandhi (left) and Sarojini Naidu (right)

1913 – At a ceremony at Kurrajong Hill, Lady Denman, the wife of Governor-General Lord Denman, announced that the future capital of Australia would be named Canberra.
1930 – Mahatma Gandhi (pictured with Sarojini Naidu) began the Salt March, a 24-day nonviolent walk to defy the British salt tax in colonial India.
1940 – The Moscow Peace Treaty was signed, ending the Winter War between Finland and the Soviet Union.
1989 – Tim Berners-Lee submitted a memorandum at CERN with details of an information-management system, the first proposal for what would become the World Wide Web.

Stefan Dragutin (d. 1316) · Gemma Galgani (b. 1878) · Jack Kerouac (b. 1922)

More anniversaries:

The Portrait of Count Stanislas Potocki is an oil-on-canvas equestrian portrait of Polish patron, politician and writer Stanisław Kostka Potocki by French painter Jacques-Louis David. It was painted in Rome in 1781, when the artist and the subject met during David's stay at the Villa Medici after winning the first prize in painting at the 1774 Prix de Rome. Potocki displayed the work at Wilanów Palace, his residence near Warsaw. It later became the property of the Branicki family, and was looted by German forces during World War II. After the war, it passed into Soviet hands, before being repatriated to Poland in 1956. The painting is now part of the collection of the Museum of King John III's Palace at Wilanów.

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