Wikipedia:Main Page history/2015 June 13

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From today's featured article

Drowning Girl is a 1963 pop art painting with oil and synthetic polymer paint on canvas by Roy Lichtenstein (pictured). Utilizing the conventions of comic book art, a thought bubble conveys the thoughts of the figure, while Ben-Day dots echo the effect of the mechanized printing process. Part of the Museum of Modern Art's permanent collection since 1971, the painting is considered among Lichtenstein's most significant works, perhaps on a par with Whaam!, his acclaimed 1963 diptych. Drowning Girl has been described as a "masterpiece of melodrama", and is one of the artist's earliest images depicting women in tragic situations, a theme to which he often returned in the mid-1960s. The painting shows a teary-eyed woman on a turbulent sea, declaring that she would rather sink in the ocean than call Brad. (Several Lichtenstein works contain text referring to an absent "Brad".) The narrative element highlights the clichéd melodrama, while its graphics reiterate Lichtenstein's theme of painterly work depicting mechanized reproduction. The work is derived from a 1962 DC Comics panel, while also borrowing from Hokusai's The Great Wave off Kanagawa and from works by modernist artists Jean Arp and Joan Miró. (Full article...)

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In the news

In tennis, the French Open concludes with American Serena Williams winning the Women's Singles and Swiss Stan Wawrinka (pictured) winning the Men's Singles.
British actor Christopher Lee dies at the age of 93.
In the Turkish general election, the Justice and Development Party loses its parliamentary majority.
India and Bangladesh sign an agreement to simplify their border by exchanging 162 enclaves.
In horse racing, American Pharoah wins the Belmont Stakes to become the first US Triple Crown winner since 1978, and in the UK, Golden Horn wins the Epsom Derby.
In association football, the UEFA Champions League concludes with Barcelona defeating Juventus in the final.
At least 18 people are killed on Mount Kinabalu after a 6.0 magnitude earthquake strikes Ranau, Sabah, Malaysia.

Ongoing events:
- FIFA Women's World Cup
Recent deaths:
- James Last
- Ludvík Vaculík

On this day...

June 13: Trooping the Colour and the Queen's Official Birthday in the United Kingdom and several other Commonwealth countries (2015)

313 – The Edict of Milan, an agreement between Constantine the Great and Licinius to treat Christians benevolently within the Roman Empire, was posted in Nicomedia.
1886 – King Ludwig II of Bavaria was found dead in Lake Starnberg near Munich under mysterious circumstances.
1952 – Soviet warplanes shot down a Swedish military Douglas DC-3A-360 Skytrain carrying out signals intelligence gathering operations, which was followed by the shootdown of a Catalina flying boat searching for the Skytrain three days later.
1971 – The New York Times began to publish the Pentagon Papers, a 7,000-page top-secret United States Department of Defense history of the nation's political and military involvement in the Vietnam War.
2010 – The Japanese Hayabusa (model pictured) space mission became the first to return samples of an asteroid (25143 Itokawa) to Earth for analysis.

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Today's featured picture

A Burchell's zebra (Equus quagga burchellii) in Etosha National Park, Namibia. This zebra is a southern subspecies of the plains zebra. It is said to have once had an impressive population, but went extinct in the wild by 1910.

Photograph: Yathin S Krishnappa

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