Wikipedia:Main Page history/2016 November 26

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From today's featured article

Warlugulong (1977) is an acrylic painting by Indigenous Australian artist Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri. In 2007 it was purchased by the National Gallery of Australia for A$2.4 million, a record auction price for a contemporary Indigenous Australian art work. The painting illustrates eight dreamings of traditional locations the artist had knowledge of, and depicts the story of an ancestral creature called Lungkata or the Blue-Tongue Lizard Man, who created bushfire. The painting portrays the aftermath of a fire caused by Lungkata to punish his two sons who had not shared a kangaroo with him that they had caught. The sons' skeletons are on the right-hand side of the image, shown against a background representing smoke and ashes. The painting exemplifies a distinctive style developed by Papunya Tula artists in the 1970s, blending representation of landscape with ceremonial iconography. Art critic Benjamin Genocchio describes it as "a work of real national significance [and] one of the most important 20th-century Australian paintings". (Full article...)

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Did you know...

Göran Fredrik Göransson

... that Göran Fredrik Göransson (pictured) was the first to successfully implement the Bessemer process for steel production on an industrial scale?
... that the Communist Party of Pakistan was founded on the sidelines of the 1948 Second Party Congress of the Communist Party of India in Calcutta?
... that boxer Issake Dabore was the first athlete from Niger to win an Olympic medal?
... that the Sentry anti-ballistic missile was packed into a container that looked like an MX missile?
... that with A Wrinkle in Time, Ava DuVernay is the first woman of color to direct a live-action film with a budget over $100 million?
... that Martin Gotthard Schneider wrote the lyrics and music for the hymn Danke, which made it to the German charts in 1963?
... that per-capita consumption of primary energy in the Faroe Islands is about 60% higher than that in continental Denmark?
... that in the run-up to the 1953 Philadelphia municipal election, a Democratic nominee died and the office he was running for was abolished?

In the news

Jimmie Johnson

Former President of Cuba Fidel Castro dies at the age of 90.
At least 44 people are killed after two passenger trains collide near Shahroud, Iran.
A train derailment near Kanpur, India, kills more than 140 people.
Jimmie Johnson (pictured) wins the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series championship, equaling the record of seven titles held by Richard Petty and Dale Earnhardt.
An earthquake with a magnitude of 7.8 strikes near Kaikoura, north of Christchurch, New Zealand, triggering tsunami warnings, causing widespread damage, and killing two people.

On this day...

November 26: Feast day of Sylvester Gozzolini and John Berchmans (Roman Catholic Church); Constitution Day in India (1949); Holodomor Remembrance Day in Ukraine (2016)

University of Notre Dame main building

1161 – A Song dynasty fleet defeated Jin dynasty ships in a naval engagement on the Yangtze river during the Jin–Song Wars.
1842 – The University of Notre Dame (main administration building pictured) was founded by Rev. Edward Sorin, of the Congregation of Holy Cross, as an all-male institution in South Bend, Indiana, US.
1943 – Second World War: The British troop ship HMT Rohna was sunk in the Mediterranean by a Luftwaffe bomb, killing more than 1,100 people.
1983 – Six robbers broke into the Brink's-Mat warehouse at London Heathrow Airport and stole three tonnes (6,612 lb) of gold bullion, much of which has never been recovered.
2011 – US-led NATO forces engaged Pakistani security forces at two Pakistani military checkposts along the Afghanistan–Pakistan border in a friendly fire incident.

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Today's featured picture

An exchequer note, with a face value of five pounds, issued by the exchequer of the Kingdom of England under William III. This bill is dated 6 August 1697, one year after the introduction of such notes, and a tax or "aid" of 3 shillings is chargeable on it. Exchequer notes paid interest for loans made to the government.

Banknote: Exchequer of the Kingdom of England (image courtesy of the National Numismatic Collection)

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