Wikipedia:Main Page history/2020 January 27

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From today's featured article

Hyūga was the second of two Ise-class battleships built for the Imperial Japanese Navy during the 1910s. The battleship supported Japanese forces in the early 1920s during the Siberian intervention in the Russian Civil War, and assisted survivors of the Great Kantō earthquake in 1923. The ship was partially modernised between 1927 and 1932 and rebuilt in the pagoda mast style, with further improvements in 1934–1936. Hyūga played a minor role in the Second Sino-Japanese War, but was considered obsolete by the eve of the Pacific War. Following the loss of most of the navy's large aircraft carriers during the Battle of Midway in mid-1942, the battleship was rebuilt with a flight deck, but lacked aircraft and qualified pilots throughout the war. In late 1944 the ship helped to decoy an American carrier fleet away from the landing beaches at Leyte. Hyūga was sunk during American airstrikes in July 1945. (This article is part of a featured topic: Battleships of Japan.)

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Did you know ...

Mozart in a 1777 copy of a painting

... that Mozart (portrait shown) composed four litanies between 1771 and 1776 – two Marian and two sacramental – as a church musician for the prince-archbishop of Salzburg?
... that students from eight school districts in Wenatchee, Washington, created public artwork for Columbia Station?
... that Charlotte Spencer, Countess Spencer, formed an organisation in the East End of London in 1868 that provided "outfits for girls going into service, or families willing to emigrate"?
... that photographs of the 1941 Lviv pogroms have been described by historians as "infamous", "horrific", and "almost iconic"?
... that Uganda's delegation at the 1972 Summer Olympics included both the nation's oldest and youngest athletes ever to compete at an Olympic Games at the time?
... that American bacteriologist Harold Conn was sometimes called "Dr. Stain"?
... that the Raja Rao Award for Literature was bestowed only seven times before it was discontinued?
... that the identification of the body of outlaw Joseph Henry Loveless more than 100 years after his death is the oldest successful identification by the DNA Doe Project?

In the news

Kobe Bryant

American former basketball player Kobe Bryant (pictured), his daughter Gianna, and seven others die in a helicopter crash near Calabasas, California.
An earthquake in Elazığ, Turkey, kills at least thirty-eight people and injures more than a thousand others.
In China, a new strain of coronavirus infects more than two thousand people, killing more than eighty.
Mikhail Mishustin is appointed Prime Minister of Russia following the resignation of Dmitry Medvedev and his cabinet.

On this day

January 27

Entrance to Auschwitz I

1785 – The University of Georgia, one of the oldest public universities in the United States, was founded.
1820 – A Russian expedition led by naval officers Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen and Mikhail Lazarev became the first explorers to sight the coast of Antarctica.
1945 – The Soviet Red Army liberated about 7,000 prisoners left behind by the Nazis in Auschwitz concentration camp (entrance pictured), in present-day Oświęcim, Poland.
1980 – Assisted by Canadian government officials, six American diplomats who had avoided capture in the Iran hostage crisis escaped to Zürich, Switzerland.
2010 – Porfirio Lobo Sosa became the new President of Honduras, ending the constitutional crisis that had begun in 2009 when Manuel Zelaya was forcibly removed from office.

Johann Nikolaus von Hontheim (b. 1701) · Giuseppe Verdi (d. 1901) · Yang Chuan-kwang (d. 2007)

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From today's featured list

Jonathan Ross (left) and
Ricky Gervais (right)

Radio Times's Most Powerful People was a series of listings created by the British television and radio magazine Radio Times from January 2003 to June 2005. The lists charted who the magazine believed were the most powerful people from three different areas of British media: TV comedy, TV drama and radio. The listing for TV comedy was published thrice, every January from 2003 to 2005; the drama and radio lists were produced just once each, in July 2004 and June 2005, respectively. The first Most Powerful People listing was published by Radio Times in January 2003, and recognised the most influential people in TV comedy in the UK. It was topped by comedian Ricky Gervais (pictured, right), as a result of the success of the award-winning second series of his TV show The Office. In July 2004, Radio Times published their Most Powerful People in TV Drama list, which was won by actress Julie Walters. The following June, Radio Times published their final Most Powerful People list, which named the most influential people in radio in the UK. Restricted only to current broadcasters, the poll was won by DJ and TV host Jonathan Ross (pictured, left). (Full list...)

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Today's featured picture

Childhood is the first in a series of allegorical oil-on-canvas paintings by American artist Thomas Cole, entitled The Voyage of Life, which represent man's journey through life. In the painting, an infant sits in a boat guided by an angel. The vessel glides out of a dark, craggy cave, which Cole described as being "emblematic of our earthly origin, and the mysterious past". The landscape is lush; everything is calm and basking in warm sunshine, reflecting the innocence and joy of childhood. The river is smooth and narrow, symbolizing the sheltered experience of childhood, and the figurehead on the prow holds an hourglass aloft. This painting, along with the other three in the series, was painted in 1842 and is held by the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.

Painting credit: Thomas Cole

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