Wikipedia:Main Page history/2018 December 22

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From today's featured article

Alan Bush (22 December 1900 – 31 October 1995) was a British composer, pianist, teacher and political activist. From a prosperous middle-class background, Bush enjoyed considerable success as a student at the Royal Academy of Music in the early 1920s. Many of his early works took the form of settings for pageants and workers' songs and choruses. In his maturer years he wrote symphonies, operas and other large-scale works, which found greater acceptance in Eastern Europe than at home, in part because of his lifelong communist convictions. In his prewar works, Bush's music retained an essential Englishness, but was also influenced by the avant-garde European idioms of the period. Later he sought to simplify this style, in line with his Marxist-inspired belief that music should be widely accessible. Bush taught composition at the Academy for more than 50 years and was the founder and president of the Workers' Music Association. (Full article...)

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Did you know...

Musiktheater im Revier

... that general manager Claus Leininger's tenure at the Musiktheater im Revier (pictured) in Gelsenkirchen was described as the period of the company's highest artistic accomplishment?
... that the lyrics of the 2018 Basshunter song "Masterpiece" quote lines from the 2009 video game League of Legends?
... that two portraits of 17th-century midwife Jacquemijntje Garniers by her son, the Dutch painter Gabriël Metsu, sold in London and Paris more than 200 years later?
... that the victim of the first house fire in America for which an account was published can be found at the Point of Graves in Portsmouth, New Hampshire?
... that former footballer Charlie McGeever is principal of a Gaelcholáiste?
... that the 1959 West German film Roses for the Prosecutor was one of the rare post-war German films that openly discussed the Nazi justice system?
... that the MLS Cup 2009 was the first major sports championship won by a team from Utah in nearly 40 years?
... that while regent of Kebumen, Indonesia, Rustriningsih would answer phone calls from her constituents during a TV programme?

In the news

The Balangiga bells

In field hockey, the World Cup concludes with Belgium defeating the Netherlands in the final.
The Balangiga bells (pictured), taken by US Army soldiers from the Philippines in 1901 as war trophies, are repatriated.
Nine people are killed when a high-speed train collides with a locomotive in Ankara, Turkey.
Two days after a shooting at the Christmas market in Strasbourg, France, in which five people died, French police kill the suspected perpetrator.

On this day

December 22

Chico Mendes

401 – The papacy of Innocent I began.
1807 – In an effort to avoid engaging in the Napoleonic Wars, the United States Congress passed the Embargo Act, forbidding American ships from engaging in trade with foreign nations.
1968 – Cultural Revolution: The People's Daily published a piece by Mao Zedong directing that "the intellectual youth must go to the country, and will be educated from living in rural poverty."
1988 – Brazilian unionist and environmental activist Chico Mendes (pictured) was murdered at his Xapuri home.
2008 – A dike ruptured at a waste containment area in Roane County, Tennessee, U.S., releasing 1.1 billion US gallons (4,200,000 m³) of coal fly ash slurry into local waterways.

Étienne Martellange (b. 1569) · William Hyde Wollaston (d. 1828) · Rose Talbot Bullard (d. 1915)

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Today's featured picture

Seth Rollins is the ring name of Colby Daniel Lopez (born 1986), an American professional wrestler. He has been signed to WWE since 2010, having previously wrestled for Ring of Honor under the ring name Tyler Black. He debuted on WWE's main roster at the 2012 Survivor Series as part of a faction called The Shield, winning his first main roster championship while with the group, the WWE Tag Team Championship with Roman Reigns.

This picture shows Rollins with the WWE Money in the Bank briefcase, which he won in 2014.

Photograph: Anton Jackson

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