Wikipedia:Main Page history/2023 October 17
From today's featured article
The planet Venus has been used as a setting in fiction since before the 19th century. Its impenetrable cloud cover gave writers free rein to speculate on conditions at Venus's surface, which was often depicted as warmer than Earth's but habitable. Images of a lush, verdant paradise, an oceanic planet, or fetid swampland, often inhabited by dinosaur-like beasts or other monsters, became common in early pulp science fiction, particularly from the 1930s to the 1950s. Some stories portrayed the surface as a desert, or invented more exotic settings. Venusians were often portrayed as gentle, ethereal, beautiful, and female, after the Roman goddess Venus. Since the discovery of Venus's harsh surface conditions, the planet has mostly been portrayed as a hostile, toxic inferno. Some stories have imagined the planet's colonization and terraforming, although the vision of a tropical Venus has occasionally been revisited in intentionally retro stories. (Full article...)
Did you know ...
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- ... that English missionary Reverend Thomas Sparshott co-wrote a book in Swahili, and his daughter Margaret Elwyn Sparshott (pictured) was responsible as matron for 22 hospitals in World War I?
- ... that in the early 1990s, several TV stations in Northern California experimented with moving prime time up an hour?
- ... that Louise Fulton was the first African-American to win a professional bowling tournament?
- ... that in 1936, a dairy farmer unsuccessfully attempted to cut a signal wire to prevent a train from derailing as it approached a landslide in New Zealand?
- ... that footballer Sara Mérida played for Espanyol Femení, was a physiotherapist for the club, and ultimately helped coach her former team to promotion in 2022?
- ... that a 1937 proposal to name a small church in Bremen after Horst Wessel provoked a fierce dispute with the local Nazi Party leadership?
- ... that a landscape demo created by Attention to Detail for the Konix Multisystem became the basis for Cybermorph on Atari Jaguar?
- ... that the Wisconsin Butter Fire created a river of melted butter in Madison?
In the news
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- Daniel Noboa (pictured) is elected President of Ecuador.
- The National Party, led by Christopher Luxon, wins the most seats in the New Zealand general election.
- Australian voters reject altering the Constitution to establish an Indigenous Voice to Parliament.
- NASA's Psyche mission is launched to explore the metal-rich asteroid 16 Psyche.
On this day
- 1346 – Hundred Years' War: King David II of Scotland (pictured) was captured at the Battle of Neville's Cross following his invasion of England under the terms of Scotland's Auld Alliance with France.
- 1931 – American gangster Al Capone was convicted on five counts of income-tax evasion.
- 1952 – Indonesian Army elements surrounded the Merdeka Palace, demanding that President Sukarno disband the Provisional People's Representative Council.
- 1973 – Yom Kippur War: Egyptian forces retreated from the Battle of the Chinese Farm, allowing Israeli forces to build their first bridge across the Suez Canal.
- 2000 – A fatal rail accident at Hatfield, Hertfordshire, led to the introduction of widespread speed limit reductions throughout the British rail network and eventually caused the collapse of the railway management group Railtrack.
- Beatrice of Falkenburg (d. 1277)
- Jupiter Hammon (b. 1711)
- James Scott (b. 1947)
- Micheline Ostermeyer (d. 2001)
Today's featured picture
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The Holmdel Horn Antenna is a large microwave horn antenna that was used as a satellite communication antenna and radio telescope during the 1960s at Bell Telephone Laboratories in Holmdel Township, New Jersey, United States. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1988 because of its association with the research work of two radio astronomers, Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson, who used it to discover the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMBR) that permeates the universe. This helped change the science of cosmology, the study of the history of the universe, from a field for unlimited theoretical speculation into a discipline of direct observation. In 1978, Penzias and Wilson received the Nobel Prize in Physics for their discovery. Photograph/Painting/etc. credit: NASA; restored by Bammesk
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