Wikipedia:Main Page history/2018 April 12

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From today's featured article

Imogen Holst (12 April 1907 – 9 March 1984) was a British composer, arranger, conductor, teacher and festival administrator. In the 1940s she helped to establish Dartington Hall as a major centre of music education, and for the next 20 years was the joint artistic director of the Aldeburgh Festival. The only child of the composer Gustav Holst, she attended the Royal College of Music, but was unable for health reasons to follow her ambitions to be a pianist or a dancer, and became a full-time organiser for the English Folk Dance and Song Society. In the early 1950s she became Benjamin Britten's musical assistant. In later years she concentrated on the preservation of her father's musical legacy, and wrote several books on his life and works. The music she wrote is not widely known and has received little critical attention. She received numerous academic honours, and was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1975. (Full article...)

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Did you know...

Große Kirche tower in the 1960s

... that on 12 April 1945, a white flag was hung from the tower of the Große Kirche Aplerbeck (pictured), one of two churches after the same design by Christian Heyden, to signal capitulation?
... that Indian-born physician Jainti Dass Saggar was the first non-white person to be elected a councillor in Scotland?
... that when dissenting from the US Supreme Court decision in Lafler v. Cooper, Justice Antonin Scalia wrote that the Court had elevated "plea bargaining from a necessary evil to a constitutional entitlement"?
... that war veteran Owen Pick carried the flag for Great Britain at the 2018 Winter Paralympics opening ceremony?
... that the African-American settlers at Port Cresson were pacifist Quakers who were unequipped to defend themselves when attacked by King Joe?
... that after The Ultra Secret was published, German professor Arthur Thomas Hatto feared being kidnapped by Soviets?
... that the coronate prickly-winkle is a marine mollusk but can be found on limestone cliffs well above high water mark?
... that Brian Wilson is a genius?

In the news

The 10th hole at Augusta National Golf Club

At least 257 people are killed in an Algerian Air Force Ilyushin Il-76 aircraft crash in Algeria.
In golf, Patrick Reed wins the Masters Tournament at Augusta National Golf Club (pictured) in the United States.
A suspected chemical weapons attack in Douma, Syria, kills dozens of people.
In the Hungarian parliamentary election, a coalition led by Prime Minister Viktor Orbán wins its third consecutive supermajority in the Hungarian National Assembly.

On this day...

April 12: Yuri's Night; Cosmonautics Day in Russia

SMS Zrínyi

627 – King Edwin of Northumbria was converted to Christianity by Bishop Paulinus of York, who had previously saved his life.
1807 – The Froberg mutiny at Fort Ricasoli in Malta came to a close when the rebels blew up 600 barrels of gunpowder and escaped, although they were later caught.
1861 – Confederate forces began firing at Fort Sumter in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina, starting the American Civil War.
1910 – SMS Zrínyi (pictured), one of the last pre-dreadnoughts built by the Austro-Hungarian Navy, was launched.
1994 – Husband-and-wife law partners Laurence Canter and Martha Siegel posted the first massive commercial spam on Usenet.

Charles VII of Sweden (d. 1167) · Alexander Ostrovsky (b. 1823) · Keiko Fukuda (b. 1913)

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Today's featured picture

A female and a juvenile guinea baboon (Papio papio) at Port Lympne Wild Animal Park, England. This species is native to dry forests, gallery forests, and adjoining bush savannas in western Africa. This diurnal animal is primarily terrestrial, but sleeps in trees at night. More than 200 individuals may be in the same troop, which is limited in size by the number of suitable sleeping trees.

Photograph: William Warby

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