Wikipedia:Today's featured list/June 2017

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June 2

The World Fantasy Award—Long Fiction is given each year for fantasy stories published in English. The World Fantasy Awards are given each year by the World Fantasy Convention for the best fantasy fiction published in English during the previous calendar year. A work of fiction is eligible for the category if it is between 10,000 and 40,000 words in length; awards are also given out for longer pieces in the Novel category and shorter lengths in the Short Fiction category. The Long Fiction category has been awarded annually since 1982, though between 1975—when the World Fantasy Awards were instated—and 1982 the short fiction category covered works of up to 40,000 words. In 2016, the name of the category was changed from Best Novella to Long Fiction. During the 35 nomination years, 124 authors have had works nominated; 36 of them have won, including ties and co-authors. Only four authors have won more than once: Elizabeth Hand, with three wins out of eight nominations; Richard Bowes, with two wins out of three nominations; and K. J. Parker, who also won twice out of three nominations. Of authors who have won at least once, Hand has the most nominations, followed by George R. R. Martin at five and Ursula K. Le Guin at four. (Full list...)


June 5

2017 marks the 40th anniversary of the WHO Model List of Essential Medicines.
2017 marks the 40th anniversary of the WHO Model List of Essential Medicines.

The WHO Model List of Essential Medicines, published by the World Health Organization (WHO), contains the medications considered to be most effective and safe to meet the most important needs in a health system. The list is frequently used by countries to help develop their own local lists of essential medicine. As of 2016, more than 155 countries have created national lists of essential medicines based on the World Health Organizations model list. The list is divided into core items and complementary items. The core items are deemed to be the most cost effective options for key health problems and are usable with little additional health care resources. The complementary items either require additional infrastructure such as specially trained health care providers or diagnostic equipment or have a lower cost-benefit ratio. The first list was published in 1977 and included 212 medications. The WHO updates the list every two years. The 14th list was published in 2005 and contained 306 medications. A separate list for children up to 12 years of age, known as the WHO Model List of Essential Medicines for Children, was created in 2007 and is in its 5th edition. (Full list...)


June 9

Lana Del Rey
Lana Del Rey

American singer-songwriter Lana Del Rey has received 16 awards and 54 nominations. She began writing songs at the age of 18, and started performing in nightclubs in Brooklyn, New York City. In 2011, Del Rey was signed by Stranger Records and released her debut single, "Video Games". The song won the Ivor Novello Award for Best Contemporary Song. Her second single "Born to Die" won the UK Music Video Award for Best International Pop Video in 2012. Del Rey won the Brit Award for International Breakthrough Act, the Q Award for Next Big Thing, and the GQ Award for Woman of the Year in 2012. In 2013, Del Rey won the Brit Award for International Female Solo Artist, as well as the ECHO Awards for Best International Female Artist Rock/Pop and Best International Newcomer. She recorded the song "Young and Beautiful" for the soundtrack of the 2013 film adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, which won the Satellite Award for Best Original Song. At the 2015 MTV Europe Music Awards, Del Rey won the MTV Europe Music Award for Best Alternative. (Full list...)


June 12

DS:Style is a series of educational software products for the Nintendo DS console. The series was created and published in Japan exclusively by Square Enix, a Japanese video game developer and publisher, and developed by both Square Enix and several other companies. It includes reference guides, travel guides for different countries or cities, and study guides for Japanese professional licensing and civil servant exams. The first nine products in the series were announced on April 4, 2007 and the first five were released on July 5, 2007; the last DS:Style release was on February 3, 2011. Several of the products were named after other non-software products, such as the Lonely Planet series of travel guides. The releases, as they fell in the line between games and software products, went largely unreviewed. Critics' reactions to the series were tepid; they felt that the products would sell well, given the publisher and subject matter, but that there was little interesting about them. (Full list...)


June 16

Landon Donovan scored 57 goals during 157 appearances for the United States men's national soccer team from 2000 to 2014. Since 2008, he has been the United States's all-time male top goalscorer. Donovan scored in his debut for the United States, a 2–0 win over Mexico in a friendly played on October 25, 2000. His first competitive goal came on January 19, 2002, against South Korea in the 2002 CONCACAF Gold Cup. A few months later, he played in his first FIFA World Cup, scoring against Poland on June 14, 2002, and Mexico on June 17, 2002. At the 2010 FIFA World Cup, Donovan scored three goals, against Slovenia and Algeria in the group stage and Ghana in the Round of 16. Donovan retired from international soccer on October 10, 2014, after not participating in the 2014 FIFA World Cup. (Full list...)


June 19

K. G. George in 2010
K. G. George

The J. C. Daniel Award is Kerala's highest award in Malayalam cinema. It is presented annually by the Kerala State Chalachitra Academy, a non-profit institution under the Department of Cultural Affairs of the Government of Kerala, India. Instituted in 1992, the award is given to honour the recipients for their "outstanding contributions to Malayalam cinema". Recipients are selected by an independent jury established by the Academy and the Department of Cultural Affairs. The Government of Kerala created the award to commemorate the contribution of Indian filmmaker J. C. Daniel, who is often regarded as the "father of Malayalam cinema". Since its inception, the J. C. Daniel Award has been bestowed on 23 individuals. The award was first presented to film distributor and producer T. E. Vasudevan in 1992. Actress Aranmula Ponnamma is the only woman who has received the honour, in 2005. The most recent winner is screenwriter and director K. G. George (pictured), who was honoured at the 2015 Kerala State Film Awards ceremony held on 15 October 2016. (Full list...)


June 23

Downtown Yellowknife
Downtown Yellowknife

There are 24 municipalities in the Northwest Territories, the most populous of Canada's three territories with 41,786 residents as of 2016 and the second-largest territory in land area at 1,143,794 km2 (441,621 sq mi). The Northwest Territories' municipalities cover only 0.2% of the territory's land mass but are home to 95.8% of its population. According to the Cities, Towns and Villages Act, the Hamlets Act and the Charter Communities Act, all of which were enacted in 2003, a municipality is an area within a city, town, village, hamlet or charter community that was established or continued by a legislative order. Yellowknife (pictured) is the capital of the Northwest Territories and its only city, while Fort Simpson is its only village. Of the remaining 22 municipalities, three of them are charter communities, four are community governments of the Tlicho people, eleven are hamlets and four are towns. Nearly half of the population of the Northwest Territories (46.8%) resides in Yellowknife, the largest municipality in the territory at 19,569 residents. (Full list...)


June 26

Gustav Kirchhoff
Gustav Kirchhoff

The Davy Medal is awarded by the Royal Society of London "for an outstandingly important recent discovery in any branch of chemistry". Named after Humphry Davy, the medal is awarded with a monetary gift, initially of £1000 (currently £2000). The medal was first awarded in 1877 to Robert Wilhelm Bunsen and Gustav Robert Kirchhoff (pictured) "for their researches & discoveries in spectrum analysis", and has since been awarded 140 times. The medal is awarded annually, and unlike other Royal Society medals, such as the Hughes Medal, it has been awarded annually without ever missing a year. The medal has been awarded to multiple individuals in the same year on seven occasions. The most recent year in which two individuals won the Davy Medal was 1968, when John Cornforth and George Joseph Popjak were honoured "in recognition of their distinguished joint work on the elucidation of the biosynthetic pathway to polyisoprenoids and steroids". (Full list...)


June 30

The current 400-series highway network in Southern Ontario
The current 400-series highway network in Southern Ontario

The 400-series highways are a network of controlled-access highways throughout the southern portion of the Canadian province of Ontario, forming a special subset of the provincial highway system. They are analogous to the Interstate Highway System in the United States or the Autoroute system of neighbouring Quebec, but under provincial jurisdiction and regulated by the Ministry of Transportation of Ontario (MTO). Although Ontario had been constructing divided highways for two decades prior, 400-series designations were introduced in 1952. Initially only Highways 400, 401 and 402 were numbered; other designations followed in the subsequent decades. Modern 400-series highways have high design standards, speed limits of 100 kilometres per hour (62 mph), and various collision avoidance and traffic management systems. The design of 400-series highways has set the precedent for a number of innovations used throughout North America, including the parclo interchange and a modified Jersey barrier design known as the Ontario Tall Wall. (Full list...)