Wikipedia:Main Page history/2019 September 20

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From today's featured article

Sutton Hoo Helmet is a 2002 sculpture by the English artist Rick Kirby. A representation of the Anglo-Saxon helmet of the same name found in the Sutton Hoo ship-burial, it was commissioned by the National Trust to hang outside the Sutton Hoo visitor centre. Together with the centre, the sculpture was unveiled by Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney on 13 March 2002. Weighing 900 kg (2,000 lb), it is 1.8 m (5.9 ft) high, 1.2 m (3.9 ft) wide and 1.6 m (5.2 ft) deep. It is made of mild steel plates that are coloured red. Designed to have a "fierce presence", it is inspired by the fragmentary appearance of the reconstructed helmet rather than the glistening replica made by the Royal Armouries. Steel is Kirby's favoured medium, allowing the sense of scale and dramatic impact found in Sutton Hoo Helmet. The sculpture is illustrative of Kirby's largely figural body of work, and its mask-like quality has been repeated in subsequent pieces. (Full article...)

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Did you know...

Janice Kavander

... that Janice Kavander (pictured) once sang both the U.S. and Canadian national anthems at a hockey game – in Sweden?
... that although Schreber's yellow bat is believed to be an insectivore, the related white-bellied yellow bat has been observed to eat dead bats in captivity?
... that African-American suffragist Maud E. Craig Sampson Williams was denied membership in the National American Woman Suffrage Association?
... that What Did You Eat Yesterday? was one of the first pieces of mainstream Japanese media to substantially depict a cohabiting gay male couple?
... that Sir Donald Douglas was President of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh, and his son Sir Neil Douglas was President of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh?
... that the death penalty in Missouri was restored in large part due to the lynching of Jay Lynch?
... that Polish resistance member Alicja Iwańska became an academic and compared political, religious, and racial persecution in Europe to U.S. segregation restrictions?
... that in 1975, a field mouse knocked Michigan radio station WKJR off the air for 45 minutes?

In the news

Ricky Rubio

The FIBA Basketball World Cup concludes, with Spain defeating Argentina in the final (Ricky Rubio, the tournament MVP, pictured).
In Gaelic football, the All-Ireland Championship concludes, with Dublin defeating Kerry in the final.
Drone attacks on two major oil facilities force Saudi Arabia to cut more than half of its oil production.
Astronomers announce the detection of water in the atmosphere of exoplanet K2-18b, the first such discovery for an exoplanet in the habitable zone around a star.

On this day

September 20

Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs

1260 – The second of two major uprisings by the Old Prussian tribe of Balts began against the Teutonic Knights.
1697 – The first of a series of treaties comprising the Peace of Ryswick was signed between France and the Grand Alliance, ending the Nine Years' War.
1944 – Second World War: Allied forces captured San Marino from the German Army.
1973 – Billie Jean King defeated Bobby Riggs (both pictured) in straight sets at the Astrodome in Houston, Texas, in an internationally televised tennis match dubbed the "Battle of the Sexes".
2000 – The Real Irish Republican Army carried out a rocket launcher attack on the headquarters of MI6 in Vauxhall, London, but the building suffered little damage and there were no casualties.

Maurice Benyovszky (b. 1746) · Jacob Grimm (d. 1863) · Tereska Torrès (d. 2012)

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From today's featured list

Rihanna

Fourteen singles topped the Billboard Hot 100 in 2011. The Billboard Hot 100 is a chart that ranks the best-performing singles of the United States. Its data, published by Billboard magazine and compiled by Nielsen SoundScan, was based collectively on each single's weekly physical and digital sales, as well as airplay. In 2011, nine acts achieved their first US number-one single, either as a lead artist or a featured guest. Six collaboration singles topped the chart. Pop singers Adele, Britney Spears, Katy Perry and Rihanna (pictured) each earned two number-one songs during the year. One of Adele's songs, "Rolling in the Deep", was the best-performing single of 2011, topping the Billboard Year-End Hot 100. She became the fourth solo female to have multiple songs spend at least five weeks each at number one in one calendar year. Rihanna's "We Found Love" was the longest-running single of the year, having topped the chart for eight consecutive weeks in 2011 and two additional weeks in 2012. (Full list...)

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Today's featured picture

The Kiss is an oil-on-canvas painting with added gold leaf, silver and platinum by Austrian Symbolist painter Gustav Klimt. It was painted at some point in 1907 and 1908, during the height of what scholars call Klimt's "Golden Period". The painting depicts a couple embracing each other, their bodies entwined in elaborate beautiful robes decorated in a style influenced by the contemporary Art Nouveau style and the organic forms of the earlier Arts and Crafts movement. Despite an ongoing controversy regarding Klimt's three-part Vienna Ceiling series, which was criticized as pornographic, The Kiss was enthusiastically received and was purchased, still unfinished, by the Austrian government when it was put on public exhibition. The painting is considered by scholars to be a masterpiece of Vienna Secession. It now hangs in the Österreichische Galerie Belvedere museum in the Belvedere, Vienna.

Painting credit: Gustav Klimt

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