Wikipedia:Main Page history/2019 May 31

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Rihanna

Good Girl Gone Bad is the third studio album by Barbadian singer Rihanna, released on May 31, 2007, by Def Jam Recordings and SRP Records. Inspired by Brandy Norwood's album Afrodisiac (2004), Good Girl Gone Bad is a pop, dance-pop and R&B album with 1980s influences. It marks a departure from the Caribbean sound of Rihanna's previous releases. Critics gave it generally positive reviews, praising its composition and Rihanna's new musical direction, though some criticized the lyrics. The album received seven Grammy Award nominations at the 2008 ceremony; the single "Umbrella" won in the Best Rap/Sung Collaboration category, and later came in at number 412 on Rolling Stone's updated 500 Greatest Songs of All Time list. The album debuted at number two on the US Billboard 200 chart, reached number one in Canada, Switzerland and the United Kingdom, and had sold over 9 million copies worldwide as of 2017. It spawned five singles, including "Umbrella" and "Don't Stop the Music". (Full article...)

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Julie Packard

... that the deep-sea coral species Gersemia juliepackardae was named for Julie Packard (pictured), executive director of Monterey Bay Aquarium, for her work as an ocean conservationist?
... that the first attempt to build the Holy Trinity Cathedral of the Alexander Nevsky Lavra resulted in the demolition of the nearly-completed structure?
... that Salahuddin Wahid had a public newspaper debate with his brother on their father's vision for Indonesia?
... that "Aus der Tiefe rufe ich" ('Out of the depths have I cried') is one of six 1883 psalm settings by Friedrich Kiel?
... that Chen Fangyun proposed a control system that was crucial for the launch of China's first geosynchronous communications satellite in 1984?
... that investigators considered the murder of Lisa Holm especially heinous as Holm was only seventeen years old and physically weaker than her killer?
... that British architect Bryan Thomas has designed for the Church of England, the Christian Scientists, and the Quakers?
... that the people who commissioned Our Trip to Africa demanded the film's destruction after seeing it?

In the news

Hableány river cruiser in 2017

James Marape is elected Prime Minister of Papua New Guinea, following the resignation of Peter O'Neill.
A river cruiser (pictured) collides with another vessel and sinks in Budapest, Hungary, killing at least seven people.
In the European Parliament election, the centre-right and centre-left lose seats, while the liberals, far-right, and greens and regionalists make the largest gains.
British Prime Minister Theresa May, under pressure over her handling of Brexit, announces her intention to resign.
A prison riot in Acarigua, Venezuela, leaves 29 prisoners dead and 19 guards injured.

On this day

May 31: World No Tobacco Day; Feast of the Visitation (Catholicism and Anglicanism); International Quds Day (2019)

Revolutionary Tribunal

1293 – The forces of Raden Wijaya won a major victory in the Mongol invasion of Java, which is considered to be the founding date of the city of Surabaya.
1795 – French Revolution: The Revolutionary Tribunal (pictured), a court instituted by the National Convention for the trial of political offenders, was suppressed.
1935 – An earthquake of magnitude 7.7 M_w struck Balochistan in the British Raj, now part of Pakistan, killing between 30,000 and 60,000 people.
1981 – An organized mob of police and government-sponsored paramilitias began burning the public library in Jaffna, Sri Lanka, destroying more than 97,000 items in one of the most violent examples of ethnic biblioclasm of the 20th century.
2009 – American physician George Tiller, one of the few doctors in the country who performed late-term abortions, was shot and killed by Scott Roeder, an anti-abortion activist.

Pierre Victurnien Vergniaud (b. 1753) · Walt Whitman (b. 1819) · Carla Lane (d. 2016)

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Larry O'Brien in 1961

NBA champions are the winners of the National Basketball Association (NBA) Finals, the conclusion of the league's postseason. All Finals have been played in a best-of-seven format and are contested between the winners of the Eastern Conference and the Western Conference (formerly Divisions before 1970), except in 1950, when the Eastern Division champion faced the winner between the Western and Central Division champions. Prior to 1949, the playoffs were a three-stage tournament where the two semifinal winners played each other in the finals. The winning team of the series receives the Larry O'Brien Championship Trophy, named after Larry O'Brien (pictured), Commissioner of the NBA from 1975 to 1984. The current home-and-away format in the NBA Finals is in a 2–2–1–1–1 format (the team with the better regular season record plays on their home court in Games 1, 2, 5 and 7). The Boston Celtics and the Minneapolis/Los Angeles Lakers alone own almost half of the titles, having won a combined 33 of 72 championships. The 2019 NBA Finals are being contested between the two-time defending champion Golden State Warriors and the Toronto Raptors. (Full list...)

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Chien-Shiung Wu (May 31, 1912 – February 16, 1997) was a Chinese-American experimental physicist who made significant contributions in the field of nuclear physics. Wu worked on the Manhattan Project, where she helped develop the process for separating uranium into uranium-235 and uranium-238 isotopes by gaseous diffusion. She is best known for conducting the Wu experiment, which proved that parity is not conserved. This discovery resulted in her colleagues Tsung-Dao Lee and Chen-Ning Yang winning the 1957 Nobel Prize in Physics, while Wu herself was awarded the inaugural Wolf Prize in Physics in 1978. Her expertise in experimental physics evoked comparisons to Marie Curie. Her nicknames include the "First Lady of Physics", the "Chinese Madame Curie" and the "Queen of Nuclear Research".

This picture, taken in 1963, shows Wu in her laboratory at Columbia University in New York, while she was professor of physics there. The photograph is in the collection of the Smithsonian Institution Archives.

Photograph credit: Science Service, Smithsonian Institution; restored by Adam Cuerden

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