Wikipedia:Main Page history/2019 August 2

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From today's featured article

Ryūjō ("Prancing Dragon") was a light aircraft carrier built for the Imperial Japanese Navy during the early 1930s. Small and lightly built in an attempt to exploit a loophole in the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922, she proved to be top-heavy and only marginally stable, and was back in the shipyard for modifications within a year of completion. With her stability improved, Ryūjō returned to service and was employed in operations during the Second Sino-Japanese War. During World War II, she provided air support for operations in the Philippines, Malaya, and the Dutch East Indies, where her aircraft participated in the Second Battle of the Java Sea. During the Indian Ocean raid in April 1942, the carrier attacked British merchant shipping with both her guns and her aircraft. Ryūjō participated in the Battle of the Aleutian Islands in June. She was sunk by American carrier aircraft at the Battle of the Eastern Solomons on 24 August 1942. (Full article...)

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Did you know...

Arthur Sullivan

... that Arthur Sullivan (pictured) was awarded the Victoria Cross for rescuing four drowning soldiers under fire during the North Russia intervention in 1919?
... that the excavated Asthall barrow was found to contain a high-status Anglo-Saxon burial?
... that East German Udo Zimmermann composed his fifth opera, Die wundersame Schustersfrau, based on a Spanish play by Federico García Lorca, on a commission for the West German Schwetzingen Festival?
... that Charles H. Stonestreet received the First Plenary Council of Baltimore in 1852 as President of Georgetown University?
... that Dioscorea chouardii is known from a single crag in the Pyrenees and has been monitored using scaffolding and telescopes?
... that since 2001, street artist John Hamon has postered and projected his image on the buildings of Paris and 76 other cities around the world?
... that prior to the first town council elections in Loxahatchee Groves, Florida, a political forum for the candidates was hosted at a nudist resort?
... that English theatre historian "Popie" called Robert Michaelis "one of the very best performers Daly's ever had"?
... that, described as being "cursed", Rispin Mansion was variously used as a SWAT practice ground, a residence, a real-estate showroom, a ghost hunting site, and a nunnery?

In the news

Egan Bernal

A prison riot in Altamira, Brazil, leaves 57 people dead.
In cycling, Colombian Egan Bernal (pictured) becomes the first Latin American to win the Tour de France.
Incumbent President of Tunisia Beji Caid Essebsi dies at the age of 92, and Mohamed Ennaceur is named as his interim replacement.
In a European heat wave, national all-time temperature records are broken in Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg and the United Kingdom.

On this day

August 2: Republic Day in North Macedonia

Lion of Chaeronea

338 BC – A Macedonian army overcame the combined forces of Athens and Thebes at the Battle of Chaeronea (memorial statue pictured), securing Macedonian hegemony over the majority of Ancient Greece.
216 BC – Second Punic War: Outnumbered Carthaginian forces led by Hannibal defeated a Roman army, near the town of Cannae, Apulia, in southeast Italy.
1916 – An explosion, blamed on Austro-Hungarian saboteurs, sank the Italian dreadnought Leonardo da Vinci.
1939 – Leo Szilard wrote a letter, signed by Albert Einstein and addressed to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, warning that Germany may develop atomic bombs, leading to the U.S. establishing the Manhattan Project.
1989 – Sri Lankan Civil War: The Indian Peace Keeping Force began a massacre that led to the deaths of 64 minority Sri Lankan Tamil civilians over a two-day period in Valvettithurai, Sri Lanka.

Andrew Barton (d. 1511) · Jack L. Warner (b. 1892) · Bertha Lutz (b. 1894)

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From today's featured list

Kuroshoin of the Ninomaru Palace

Fourteen National Treasures of Japan are residential structures from the 15th-century feudal Muromachi period to the early modern 17th-century Edo period. The term National Treasure has been used in Japan to denote cultural properties since 1897. The definition and the criteria have changed since the inception of the term. The residential structures adhere to the current definition, and were designated National Treasures when the Law for the Protection of Cultural Properties was implemented on June 9, 1951. The structures listed include teahouses, shoin (the Ninomaru Palace pictured), guest or reception halls and other rooms which are part of Japanese domestic architecture. While most of the structures are located in temples, one is a castle. In 2009, the early 20th century Akasaka Palace was designated as a National Treasure in the category of "modern residences" (Meiji period and later). It is the only National Treasure in this category. (Full list...)

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Today's featured picture

The Portrait of Doña Isabel de Porcel is an oil-on-canvas painting by Spanish painter Francisco Goya, produced around 1805. The portrait depicts Isabel Lobo Velasco de Porcel, who was born at Ronda around 1780 and was the second wife of Antonio Porcel. Isabel's husband was 25 years older than she; they met when she was 20 years old. Antonio Porcel was a liberal and an associate of Manuel Godoy, Prince of Peace, who was a friend of Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos, who in turn brought him in contact with Goya, who lived nearby; the painting is said to have been a gift from the artist in return for hospitality. The half-length portrait depicts a young woman dressed in typical Spanish attire, a white shirt and a black mantilla. In spite of her "maja" attire, the richness of the textiles and her ladylike appearance give the picture an aristocratic elegance; at this time, wealthy Spanish "people of fashion" often wore the styles of lower class urban dandies and their female equivalents, as seen in Goya's famous clothed version of La maja. The painting is now in the collection of the National Gallery in London.

Painting credit: Francisco Goya

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