Wikipedia:Main Page history/2015 March 14

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From today's featured article

Portrait of a Young Girl, c. 1465–70. 29 cm x 22.5 cm, Gemäldegalerie, Berlin

Portrait of a Young Girl is a small oil-on-oak panel painting in the Gemäldegalerie, Berlin, by the Early Netherlandish painter Petrus Christus. It was completed between 1465 and 1470, towards the end of the artist's life, and marks a significant advance in the oeuvres of both Christus and contemporary portraiture. The girl is set in an airy, three-dimensional, realistic setting, confronting the viewer with an expression that is reserved, but alert and intelligent. She reflects the Gothic ideal of elongated facial features, narrow shoulders, tightly pinned hair and an almost unnaturally long forehead. The painting is widely regarded as one of the most exquisite Northern Renaissance portraits. Art historian Joel Upton describes the sitter as resembling "a polished pearl, almost opalescent, lying on a cushion of black velvet." The panel builds on the work of the first generation Northern Renaissance painters Jan van Eyck and Rogier van der Weyden, and was highly influential in the decades after its completion. Its appeal lies in part in the intriguing stare, accentuated by the slight misalignment of her eyes and asymmetry of her eyebrows. (Full article...)

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From Wikipedia's new and recently improved content:

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... that the fashion designer Zoran declared a woman's only jewelry should be her children or husband?

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In the news

German architect Frei Otto wins the Pritzker Prize shortly before his death.
Ten people, including French athletes Alexis Vastine (pictured), Camille Muffat and Florence Arthaud, are killed in a mid-air collision between two helicopters in Argentina.
The Iraqi government reports that the pre-Islamic cities of Hatra and Nimrud have been destroyed by ISIL, who claimed they were blasphemous.
A series of suicide bombings in Maiduguri, Nigeria, kills 58 people and wounds more than 140 others.
NASA's Dawn spacecraft enters orbit around the dwarf planet Ceres.
The oldest fossil belonging to the genus Homo, dating to the late Pliocene Age around 2.8 million years ago, is discovered in Afar, Ethiopia.

Ongoing: Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant
Recent deaths: Terry Pratchett – Sam Simon

On this day...

March 14: New Year's Day (Sikhs); White Day in East Asia; Pi Day

1757 – British Royal Navy Admiral John Byng was court-martialled and executed by firing squad when he failed to "do his utmost" during the Battle of Minorca at the start of the Seven Years' War.
1794 – American inventor Eli Whitney (pictured) patented the cotton gin, the first ever machine that quickly and easily separated cotton fibers from their seedpods.
1915 – First World War: British forces cornered and sank the SMS Dresden, the last remnant of the German East Asia Squadron, near the Chilean island of Más a Tierra.
1945 – The British Royal Air Force first used the Grand Slam, a 22,000 lb (9.98 t) earthquake bomb, on a strategic railroad viaduct in Bielefeld, Germany.
1972 – Italian publisher Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, known for his decision to translate and publish Boris Pasternak's novel Doctor Zhivago after it had been smuggled out of the Soviet Union, was killed in an explosion.

More anniversaries: March 13 – March 14 – March 15

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It is now March 14, 2015 (UTC) – Reload this page

Today's featured picture

Cover of the c. 1895 edition of the vocal score to The Mikado. First performed in London in 1885, The Mikado is the ninth of fourteen comic opera collaborations between the composer Arthur Sullivan and the dramatist W. S. Gilbert. Gilbert was able to satirise British politics and institutions freely by setting the opera in a fictionalised Japan. The story: After a cheap tailor is appointed Lord High Executioner of Titipu, he tries to save the town by pretending to execute the disguised son of the Mikado (the Emperor of Japan) for the capital offence of flirting; this scheme backfires. The Mikado 's original run at the Savoy Theatre was 672 performances, nearly a record at the time. It remains one of the most frequently performed musical theatre pieces in history, with regular professional and amateur revivals.

Illustration: Unknown; restoration: Adam Cuerden

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