Wikipedia:Main Page history/2021 May 5

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From today's featured article

Moto Hagio

The Heart of Thomas is a 1974 Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Moto Hagio (pictured). Originally serialized in Shūkan Shōjo Comic, a weekly manga magazine publishing shōjo manga – manga aimed at young and adolescent women – the series follows the events at a German all-boys school after the suicide of student Thomas Werner. It is one of the earliest manga in the shōnen-ai (male–male romance) genre. While The Heart of Thomas was initially poorly received by readers, by the end of its serialization it was among the most popular series in Shūkan Shōjo Comic. It significantly influenced shōjo manga as a medium, with many of the stylistic and narrative hallmarks of the series becoming standard tropes of the genre. The series has attracted considerable scholarly interest, and has been adapted into a film, a stage play, and a novel. In North America, an English-language translation of The Heart of Thomas, translated by Rachel Thorn, was published by Fantagraphics Books in 2013. (Full article...)

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Did you know ...

Interior courtyard of the Currency Building

... that Kolkata's Currency Building (pictured) has housed the Agra Bank, an office for the issue and exchange of currency, the Reserve Bank of India, and a public art museum?
... that Vieno Simonen was first elected to the Finnish parliament in 1948, ten years after she was widowed with seven children?
... that Langston Hughes allowed his poem "Mississippi–1955", written in response to Emmett Till's lynching, to be republished in all newspapers that wanted to?
... that Chris Horn, founder of the NASDAQ-listed IONA Technologies, was still living with his wife and four children in a three-bedroom semi-detached house at a time when his net worth exceeded 300 million dollars?
... that the Los Angeles restaurant El Cholo Spanish Cafe is credited with introducing the burrito to the U.S.?
... that the fossil torchwood genus Barghoornia was named in honor of paleobotanist Elso Barghoorn?
... that Frederic Growse finished the first complete and illustrated English translation of the Ramayana of Tulsidas in 1883?
... that the play Karl Marx in Kalbadevi depicts an imaginary visit by Marx to Kalbadevi, the hyper-capitalist area of Mumbai, India?

In the news

Mark Selby

An elevated section of the Mexico City Metro collapses, leaving at least 24 people dead and more than 70 others injured.
Mark Selby (pictured) wins the World Snooker Championship, defeating Shaun Murphy in the final.
Colombian president Iván Duque Márquez withdraws a proposed tax reform after nationwide protests leave at least 19 people dead.
In horse racing, Medina Spirit wins the Kentucky Derby, earning trainer Bob Baffert a record seventh victory in the race.
In Israel, 45 people are killed in a crowd crush at a religious festival on Mount Meron.

On this day

May 5: Children's Day in Japan; Cinco de Mayo in Mexico and the United States (1862)

Alan Shepard on board Freedom 7

1654 – Cromwell's Act of Grace, which pardoned the people of Scotland for any crimes committed during the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, was proclaimed in Edinburgh.
1936 – Second Italo-Ethiopian War: Italian troops captured the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa unopposed.
1961 – Project Mercury: American astronaut Alan Shepard (pictured) made a sub-orbital spaceflight on board Freedom 7, becoming the second person to travel into outer space.
1981 – After a 66-day hunger strike, Irish republican Bobby Sands died of starvation in HM Prison Maze.
1991 – Riots broke out in Washington, D.C., after a rookie police officer shot a Salvadoran man in the chest.

Napoleon (d. 1821)
Anna Johnson Pell Wheeler (b. 1883)
Mavis Batey (b. 1921)

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Today's featured picture

The Sun is the star at the center of the Solar System. It is a nearly perfect sphere of hot plasma, heated to incandescence by nuclear-fusion reactions in its core, radiating the energy mainly as visible light and infrared radiation. It is by far the most important source of energy for life on Earth. Its diameter is about 1.39 million kilometres (860,000 mi), or 109 times that of Earth. Its mass is about 330,000 times that of Earth, and accounts for about 99.86 percent of the total mass of the Solar System. Roughly three-quarters of the Sun's mass consists of hydrogen; the rest is mostly helium, with much smaller quantities of heavier elements, including oxygen, carbon, neon, and iron. This diagram illustrates the general structure of the Sun, with all features drawn to scale.

Diagram credit: Kelvin Ma

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