Wikipedia:Main Page history/2019 December 25

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From today's featured article

Charles H. Stonestreet (1813–1885) was an American Catholic priest and Jesuit who led several institutions in Maryland and Washington, D.C. After becoming a professor at Georgetown University, he led St. John's Literary Institution and St. John the Evangelist Church in Frederick, Maryland. He was appointed president of Georgetown University in 1851, and oversaw the expansion of its library. The following year, he became provincial superior of the Jesuits' Maryland Province, which faced growing anti-Catholicism from the Know Nothings; as a result, he forbade Jesuits from wearing their clerical attire in public. While president of Gonzaga College in Washington, D.C. (today a high school), he oversaw construction of St. Aloysius Church, becoming its first pastor. In the trial of the conspirators in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, he was called to testify about a parishioner, Mary Surratt, and a former student, Samuel Mudd. (Full article...)

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Did you know ...

Mystical Nativity,
Gemäldegalerie, Berlin

... that Filippo Lippi's Mystical Nativity (shown) of c. 1459 includes "no cave, no shed, no Joseph, no angels, no ox, no ass"?
... that in later life, Paul Mickelson bought the organ upon which he had made his first recording as a solo artist at NBC?
... that after the ancient Shire Oak fell in 1941, part of it was carved into a sculpture of the Madonna and Child for a local church?
... that Kavya Manyapu led the development of a dust-repelling fabric for space suits using carbon nanotubes?
... that Taylor Swift wrote, recorded, and released "Christmas Tree Farm" in six days?
... that as pastor of a Catholic church in Baltimore, William Francis Clarke worked to integrate black and Italian Catholics into parish life?
... that Austrian general Konrad Valentin von Kaim was mortally wounded at the Battle of Pozzolo on Christmas Day, 1800?
... that "The Sinner's Redemption" was called a "rude old carol" favoured by peasants?

In the news

Jamal Khashoggi

A court in Saudi Arabia sentences five people to death for the 2018 killing of Jamal Khashoggi (pictured).
In the Netherlands, the supreme court upholds a ruling that the government must meet established emissions reduction milestones, creating the first legal precedent on the impact of climate change on human rights.
United States president Donald Trump is impeached by the House of Representatives on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.
Former Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf is sentenced to death in absentia for treason and subverting the constitution.

On this day

December 25: Christmas (Western Christianity; Gregorian calendar); Quaid-e-Azam Day in Pakistan

St Mel's Cathedral in 2015

1066 – Norman Conquest: William the Conqueror was crowned king of England at Westminster Abbey, although he continued to face rebellions over the following years and was not secure on the throne until after 1072.
1809 – American physician Ephraim McDowell performed the world's first removal of an ovarian tumor.
1989 – Romanian Revolution: Communist dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu and his wife Elena were condemned to death on a wide range of charges and executed.
2009 – A fire destroyed Longford's 19th-century St Mel's Cathedral (restored cathedral pictured), considered the "flagship cathedral" of the Irish midlands.

Sverker I of Sweden (d. 1156) · Lady Grizel Baillie (b. 1665) · Joan Miró (d. 1983)

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Today's featured picture

The Adoration of the Shepherds is an oil-on-panel painting by Italian Renaissance artist Giorgione, completed around 1505 to 1510. It depicts a common subject in the nativity of Jesus in art. The scene, based on the Biblical account in Luke 2, depicts shepherds visiting the stable to celebrate the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem.

Giorgione portrayed the main characters on the right, with Saint Joseph, the Virgin Mary and the Christ Child shown in front of a dark grotto, while on the left is a bright landscape with trees, buildings and distant hills. At one time, the work was owned by the department-store magnate Samuel Henry Kress, who displayed it in the window of his Fifth Avenue store in New York City over the Christmas period in 1938. The picture was part of a donation made by the Kress Foundation to the newly established National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., in 1941, where it remains to this day.

Painting credit: Giorgione

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