Wikipedia:Main Page history/2014 November 11

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From today's featured article

"Goodbyeee" is the sixth and final episode of the British historical sitcom Blackadder 's fourth series, entitled Blackadder Goes Forth. First broadcast on BBC One on 2 November 1989, shortly before Armistice Day, the episode depicts its main characters' final hours before a British offensive on the Western Front of the First World War, and the failed attempts of Captain Blackadder, played by Rowan Atkinson (pictured), to escape his fate by feigning madness. After he cannot convince General Melchett, and Field Marshal Haig's advice is useless, he is resigned to take part in the push. It has a darker tone than other episodes in the series, culminating with the main characters charging into no-man's land under machine-gun fire. The episode's theme of death ties in with the series' use of gallows humour and its criticism and satire of war. Richard Curtis and Ben Elton wrote the episode, and additional material was provided by its cast members. Its slow-motion final sequence showing the main characters going "over the top" has often been voted one of the greatest moments in television. (Full article...)

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Did you know...

From Wikipedia's new and recently improved content:

... that journalist Hanna Stjärne (pictured) was announced as the new CEO of Sveriges Television in September 2014 and will take the post within six months?
... that hundreds of Colorado high school students protested a proposed curriculum change?
... that drummer Shannon Leto co-founded Thirty Seconds to Mars in 1998 with his younger brother Jared Leto?
... that no athlete for Cape Verde at the 2008 Summer Olympics progressed beyond the first round, replicating the country's performance at every other Olympic Games?
... that Florence Nagle and Norah Wilmot were among the first women licensed as racehorse trainers in Britain, after Nagle won a Court of Appeal ruling in 1966?
... that the white-rumped falcon has been known to nest in woodpecker holes?
... that former speaker of the House of Representatives of Liberia William Spencer Anderson was originally a barber from Delaware?

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In the news

In Mexico City, thousands protest the disappearance of 43 students and subsequent discovery of mass graves.
The ALMA radio telescope array reveals planets forming around the star HL Tauri (pictured).
In the United States midterm elections, the Republican Party wins control of the Senate and increases its majority in the House of Representatives.
In horse racing, Protectionist wins the Melbourne Cup.
One World Trade Center, at 1,776 feet (541 m) the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere, opens.
A suicide attack at Pakistan's Wagah border kills at least 60 people and injures more than 100 others.

Ongoing: Ebola outbreak – Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant
Recent deaths: Acker Bilk

On this day...

November 11: Armistice Day in Belgium, France, New Zealand and Serbia; Independence Day in Angola (1975) and Poland (1918); Veterans Day in the United States

1805 – War of the Third Coalition: French, Austrian and Russian units all suffered heavy losses in the Battle of Dürenstein.
1839 – The Virginia Military Institute, currently the oldest state military college in the United States, was founded.
1889 – Washington, named in honor of the first U.S. president, was admitted to the United States as the 42nd state.
1934 – The Shrine of Remembrance (pictured), a memorial to all Australians who have served in war, opened in Melbourne.
1999 – The House of Lords Act was given royal assent, removing most hereditary peers from the British House of Lords.

More anniversaries: November 10 – November 11 – November 12

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It is now November 11, 2014 (UTC) – Reload this page

Today's featured picture

Three stages of a common poppy flower (Papaver rhoeas): bud, flower and fruit (capsule). The species, which grows up to 70 centimetres (28 in) in height, has large showy flowers which measure 50 to 100 millimetres (2 to 4 in). The flower stem is usually covered with coarse hairs that are held at right angles to the surface. The later capsules are hairless, obovoid in shape, and less than twice as tall as they are wide, with a stigma at least as wide as the capsule.

Poppies are soil seed bank plants which germinate when the soil is disturbed. After the extensive ground disturbance caused by the fighting in World War I, poppies bloomed in between the trench lines and no man's lands on the Western Front. They have since become commonly used in western countries on and before Remembrance Day each year, as a symbol of remembrance inspired by John McCrae's poem "In Flanders Fields".

Photograph: Alvesgaspar

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