Wikipedia:Main Page history/2020 March 14

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From today's featured article

Partal Palace of the Alhambra

Muhammad III (1257–1314) was the Nasrid ruler of the Emirate of Granada in Al-Andalus on the Iberian Peninsula from 1302 until 1309. He built upon the military successes of his father Muhammad II against Castile, and expanded Granada's territory by capturing Bedmar in 1303. A treaty with Castile the following year recognised Granada's conquests in return for Muhammad's pledge of fealty and tribute to King Ferdinand IV. In 1306, Muhammad conquered Ceuta in North Africa, putting Granada in control of both sides of the Strait of Gibraltar. He built the Alhambra's Great Mosque (destroyed in the sixteenth century by Philip II), a nearby public bathhouse and the Partal Palace (pictured). Poor sight eventually forced him to rely heavily on his advisors, especially Ibn al-Hakim al-Rundi, his vizier, who became the de facto ruler. Muhammad was deposed in a palace coup when Granada was on the verge of a new war against Castile, Aragon, and the Marinids. (Full article...)

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In the news

Alyssa Healy

Global stock markets suffer their largest single-day decline since the 1987 crash.
The World Health Organization declares the coronavirus outbreak to be a pandemic, while the Italian government implements a national quarantine.
In cricket, the Women's T20 World Cup concludes with Australia defeating India in the final (player of the match Alyssa Healy pictured).
Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara win the Pritzker Architecture Prize.

On this day

March 14: New Year's Day (Sikhism); White Day in parts of East Asia; Pi Day

Lakeview Gusher

1674 – Third Anglo-Dutch War: The Royal Navy captured the Dutch East India Company ship Wapen van Rotterdam in Ronas Voe, Shetland.
1910 – Prospectors drilled into a pressurized deposit within the Midway-Sunset Oil Field in California, resulting in the largest accidental oil spill in history (pictured), which eventually released 9 million barrels (1.4 million m³) of crude oil over 18 months.
1931 – Alam Ara, the first Indian sound film, premiered at the Majestic Cinema in Bombay.
1972 – Italian publisher Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, known for his translation of Boris Pasternak's novel Doctor Zhivago after it had been smuggled out of the Soviet Union, died in a mysterious explosion.
1973 – Vietnam War: After having been captured by North Vietnamese forces five and a half years earlier, U.S. Navy pilot John McCain was released with 108 other prisoners of war.

Matilda of Ringelheim (d. 968) · Ferdinand Hodler (b. 1853) · S. Truett Cathy (b. 1921)

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Today's featured picture

Les Troyens is a French grand opera in five acts by Hector Berlioz, with a libretto written by the composer himself based on Virgil's Aeneid. The score was composed between 1856 and 1858, but Berlioz did not live long enough to see the work performed in its entirety. However, the last three acts, substantially abridged, were performed during his lifetime under the title Les Troyens à Carthage by Léon Carvalho's company, the Théâtre Lyrique, in Paris in 1863. For this performance, Berlioz added an orchestral introduction and a prologue. He was not happy with the result, noting bitterly that he had agreed to let Carvalho do it "despite the manifest impossibility of his doing it properly. He had just obtained an annual subsidy of a hundred thousand francs from the government. Nonetheless the enterprise was beyond him. His theater was not large enough, his singers were not good enough, his chorus and orchestra were small and weak."

This picture shows the cover of the "second version, second issue" of the vocal score for Les Troyens à Carthage, published in 1863.

Illustration credit: Antoine Barbizet; restored by Adam Cuerden

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