Wikipedia:Main Page history/2022 January 14b

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From today's featured article

David Bowie in 2002

Low is the 11th studio album by the English musician David Bowie, released on 14 January 1977 by RCA Records. Grounded in art rock and experimental rock, Low features Bowie's first explorations in electronic and ambient styles. Recording sessions began at Château d'Hérouville in northern France in September 1976 and ended in October at Hansa Studios in West Berlin. The cover artwork, a profile of Bowie from the film The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976), was intended as a visual pun, meaning "low profile". RCA refused to issue Low for three months, fearing it would be a commercial failure. Upon release, it divided critical opinion and received little promotion from either RCA or Bowie. Nevertheless, the album reached number two in the UK and number eleven in the US. Two singles were released: "Sound and Vision" and "Be My Wife". In later decades, critics have rated Low one of Bowie's best works, and it has appeared on several lists of the greatest albums of all time. (Full article...)

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Tristan and Isolde (Death)

... that Rogelio de Egusquiza's paintings of Tristan and Isolde (one pictured) arose from his decades-long fascination with the works of Richard Wagner?
... that Alisha Kramer worked to fight HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and inequity in women's health in Africa and Europe as a program coordinator for the Center for Strategic and International Studies?
... that many Germans' belief that homosexuality was a communicable disease limited the success of the first homosexual movement?
... that after New Jersey attorney general Walter D. Van Riper busted betting rooms protected by party boss Frank Hague, Hague had Van Riper charged with check kiting and black-market gasoline sales?
... that Rangoon kept its own time for more than two decades after Burma Standard Time first came into effect?
... that the book Our Hindu Rashtra claims that India is a de facto Hindu-majoritarian state?
... that Jeffrey Paparoa Holman gave himself his middle name, after the Paparoa Range?
... that Georgia radio station WMGA was so "atrocious" that its announcers would invite listeners to donate their records?

In the news

Furnas Lake

An apartment fire in the Bronx, New York City, kills 17 people.
A rockfall at Furnas Lake (pictured) in Capitólio, Brazil, kills 10 people.
Sidney Poitier, the first black actor to win the Academy Award for Best Actor, dies at the age of 94.
A series of massacres by bandits leave more than 200 people dead in Zamfara State, Nigeria.

On this day

January 14: Ratification Day in the United States (1784); Revolution and Youth Day in Tunisia (2011)

Kripalu Maharaj

1301 – King Andrew III died without any male heirs, ending the Árpád dynasty, which had ruled Hungary since the late 9th century.
1900 – Giacomo Puccini's opera Tosca, based on the play La Tosca by French dramatist Victorien Sardou, premiered at the Teatro Costanzi in Rome.
1939 – Norway claimed Queen Maud Land, a 2.7-million km² (1.0-million sq mi) region of Antarctica, as a dependent territory.
1957 – Hindu spiritual leader Kripalu Maharaj (pictured) was named the fifth original jagadguru, meaning 'world teacher'.
1973 – Elvis Presley's concert Aloha from Hawaii via Satellite was broadcast live, setting a record as the most watched broadcast by an individual entertainer in television history.

Mehmed VI (b. 1861)
James P. Hagerstrom (b. 1921)
Arfa Karim (d. 2012)

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From today's featured list

Moose

Cervids, or deer, are members of Cervidae, a family of hoofed ruminant mammals in the order Artiodactyla. They are widespread throughout North and South America, Europe, and Asia, and are found in a wide variety of biomes. Cervids range in size from the 60 cm (24 in) long and 32 cm (13 in) tall pudú to the 3.4 m (11.2 ft) long and 3.4 m (11.2 ft) tall moose (example pictured). The fifty-four species of Cervidae are split into eighteen genera within three subfamilies: Capreolinae (New World deer), Cervinae (Old World deer), and Hydropotinae (water deer). Extinct species have also been placed into Capreolinae and Cervinae. More than one hundred extinct Cervidae species have been discovered, though due to ongoing research and discoveries the exact number and categorization is not fixed. (Full list...)

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Today's featured picture

Messier 78 (M78) is a reflection nebula in the constellation Orion. It was discovered by French astronomer Pierre Méchain in 1780 and included by Charles Messier in his catalog of comet-like objects that same year. M78 is easily found with a small telescope as a hazy patch and features two stars of tenth and eleventh magnitude, which illuminate the cloud of dust in the nebula and make it visible. This photograph of the nebula was captured by the Wide Field Imager of the MPG/ESO telescope at the European Southern Observatory's La Silla Observatory in Chile.

Photograph credit: Igor Chekalin

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