Wikipedia:Main Page history/2020 March 2

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From today's featured article

Palmyra is an ancient city in present-day Homs Governorate, Syria. Inhabited since the Neolithic period, it entered recorded history in the early second millennium BC. Palmyra became part of the Roman Empire in the first century AD. Palmyrene merchants established colonies along the Silk Road and the city grew wealthy from trade caravans. Many monumental projects were erected, such as the Great Colonnade, the Temple of Bel, and distinctive tower tombs. Palmyra reached the apex of its power in the 260s, when its king Odaenathus defeated the Persian emperor Shapur I. After Odaenathus's assassination in 267, his widow Zenobia rebelled against Rome and conquered the Roman East. Palmyra was destroyed in 273 by the Roman emperor Aurelian. Restored on a smaller scale, it remained a minor trading center until it was sacked by the Timurids in 1400 and became a small village. During the Syrian civil war in 2015, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant destroyed large parts of the ancient city. (Full article...)

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Did you know ...

Shōji in a historic Dutch-Japanese interior

... that shōji (examples pictured), like other traditional Japanese partitions, serve as doors, windows, and walls, both interior and exterior?
... that Tayseer Sboul, one of Jordan's most celebrated writers, wrote some erotic poems?
... that KBCQ-FM in Roswell, New Mexico, was traded on two separate occasions for television stations in Amarillo, Texas, and in Richmond, Virginia?
... that British Paralympic swimmer Toni Shaw has set a world record in the S9 200 m (660 ft) butterfly at the age of 15?
... that tenants of the Bowling Green Offices Building in New York City have included the owners of the RMS Titanic, and the Erie Railroad?
... that Magdalena K. P. Smith Meyer was known as the "mother of red-spider mites of the world"?
... that Asumiko Nakamura, the author of the manga series Classmates, sought to create a story about a "slow, serious love" that was "cliché" and "almost hackneyed"?
... that "Anyone" by Demi Lovato became the most downloaded song of the day in the U.S. after she performed it at the 62nd Annual Grammy Awards?

In the news

Muhyiddin Yassin

Muhyiddin Yassin (pictured) becomes the prime minister of Malaysia following a political crisis which led to the resignation of his predecessor, Mahathir Mohamad.
Former President of Egypt Hosni Mubarak dies at the age of 91.
Forty-six people are killed and more than two hundred others are injured in riots in North East Delhi, India, during protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act.
Former film producer Harvey Weinstein is convicted of two felony sex crimes.

On this day

March 2: Clean Monday (Eastern Christianity, 2020)

Replica of one Claude Chappe's semaphore towers

1484 – The College of Arms, one of the few remaining official heraldic authorities in Europe, was incorporated by royal charter in the City of London.
1791 – French inventor Claude Chappe and his brothers first demonstrated the optical telegraph, a system that conveys information by means of visual signals, using towers (replica pictured) with pivoting crossarms.
1901 – U.S. Steel, the first billion-dollar corporation and once the world's largest producers of steel, was founded by financier J. P. Morgan.
1943 – World War II: Australian and U.S. air forces attacked and destroyed a large Japanese naval convoy in the Bismarck Sea, north of Papua New Guinea.
1995 – Researchers at Fermilab in Illinois announced the discovery of the top quark, the most massive of all observed elementary particles.

Francesco Bianchini (d. 1729) · Louis-Gabriel Suchet (b. 1770) · Grete Hermann (b. 1901)

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Deandra Dottin

Twenty-six centuries have been scored by twenty-two different players in women's Twenty20 International (WT20I) cricket. A century is a score of one hundred or more runs by a batter in a single innings. The first century in a WT20I match was scored by Deandra Dottin (pictured) of the West Indies. Dottin posted 112 not out against South Africa in the opening match of the 2010 ICC Women's World Twenty20 at Warner Park in Basseterre. Dottin, England's Danielle Wyatt, and Australia's Meg Lanning and Beth Mooney are the only players to have achieved the feat twice. The highest individual score of 148 not out in WT20Is was achieved by Australia's Alyssa Healy in a 2019 match against Sri Lanka. It is the only WT20I century to have been scored by a designated wicket-keeper. The two most recent WT20I centuries were scored at the 2020 ICC Women's T20 World Cup which is currently being contested in Australia. (Full list...)

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The Portrait of Chaliapin is an oil-on-canvas painting by Boris Kustodiev, produced in 1921. Feodor Chaliapin was a Russian opera singer; possessing a deep and expressive bass voice, he enjoyed an important international career at major opera houses. He is depicted here wearing an expensive fur coat, which had come from a Soviet warehouse containing items confiscated from rich people during the Russian Revolution, and which he had received in lieu of payment for a performance. The background shows festivities at the traditional folk holiday of Maslenitsa. Dressed in a smart suit and holding a cane, Chaliapin is portrayed as having risen above his contemporaries. His favourite dog is at his feet and, at the bottom left, his two daughters stroll on the festive square in front of a poster promoting his concert. This copy of the painting is in the collection of the Russian Museum in Saint Petersburg.

Painting credit: Boris Kustodiev

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