Wikipedia:Main Page history/2019 April 13

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From today's featured article

Joe Hewitt (13 April 1901 – 1 November 1985) rose to be an air vice-marshal in the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF). Appointed the RAAF's Assistant Chief of the Air Staff in 1941, he was posted the following year to Allied Air Forces Headquarters, South West Pacific Area, as Director of Intelligence. In 1943, he took command of No. 9 Operational Group, the RAAF's main mobile strike force, but was controversially sacked by the Chief of the Air Staff, Air Vice Marshal George Jones, less than a year later over alleged morale and disciplinary issues. As Air Member for Personnel from 1945 to 1948, he was directly responsible for the consolidation of what was then the world's fourth largest air force into a much smaller peacetime service. He was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1951. Retiring from the military in 1956, he went into business and later managed his own publishing house. The book Adversity in Success is his first-hand account of the South West Pacific air war. (Full article...)

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Did you know...

Agatha Christie's The A.B.C. Murders

... that the ABC Rail Guide features in Agatha Christie's novel The A.B.C. Murders and on the cover of two editions of the book (first edition cover pictured)?
... that Rob Morrison from Australia's The Curiosity Show was an expert witness at a Royal Commission of Inquiry into the death of a girl by a dingo?
... that Raymund Weber wrote "Zeige uns, Herr, deine Allmacht und Güte" to be sung with a modern melody, but it appears in the German Catholic hymnal with a Baroque melody?
... that D. S. Kapoor designed a replica of the Eiffel Tower to serve as an entrance to the annual Chandigarh Carnival?
... that the U.S. Homeland Security Act of 2002 has been used to expedite government-wide hiring for medical, scientific, and cybersecurity positions into the competitive federal civil service?
... that Tom Oppé chaired the working party which produced a report for the British government in 1974 recommending that babies be fed with breast milk rather than formula?
... that a calf grazing near the scene of an 1814 battle between the Royal Navy and United States Revenue Marine became the fight's only fatality?
... that Mexican federal deputy Nay Salvatori invited the public to "smoke marijuana at my house and listen to The Doors" if the drug was legalized in Mexico, despite never having smoked it herself?

In the news

Omar al-Bashir

Omar al-Bashir (pictured) is deposed as President of Sudan in a coup d'état after nearly 30 years in office, amidst mass protests against his government.
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is arrested by British authorities after Ecuador withdraws his asylum.
The Event Horizon Telescope publishes the first direct image of a black hole.
Homo luzonensis is identified as a new species in the genus Homo.

On this day

April 13

Tiger Woods

1742 – Messiah, an oratorio by baroque composer George Frideric Handel, premiered in Dublin.
1777 – American Revolutionary War: British and Hessian forces conducted a surprise attack against a Continental Army outpost at Bound Brook, New Jersey.
1948 – Civil war in Mandatory Palestine: A convoy bringing supplies and personnel to Jerusalem's Hadassah Hospital was ambushed by Arab forces, leaving seventy-nine people dead.
1973 – Catch a Fire, the landmark reggae album by Bob Marley and the Wailers, was released.
1997 – In golf, 21-year-old Tiger Woods (pictured) became the youngest player to win the US Masters, breaking the tournament's record for the lowest four-round score (270 strokes, 18 under par).

Catherine de' Medici (b. 1519) · Arthur Herbert, 1st Earl of Torrington (d. 1716) · Seamus Heaney (b. 1939)

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Today's featured picture

A Session of the Painting Jury is an oil-on-canvas painting by the French artist Henri Gervex, probably undertaken in 1885. The painting shows a meeting of the jury of the Paris Salon, the official exhibition of the Académie des Beaux-Arts, in a room on the first floor of the Palais de l'Industrie in 1883. It was itself exhibited at the Salon in 1885. Several artists of the time are identifiable in the painting including Félix-Joseph Barrias, Jean-Joseph Benjamin-Constant, Léon Bonnat, William-Adolphe Bouguereau, Alexandre Cabanel, Carolus-Duran, Gustave Achille Guillaumet and Antoine Vollon, who are involved in judging the works of art shown. A Session of the Painting Jury has been in the collection of the Musée d'Orsay in Paris since 1981.

Painting: Henri Gervex

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