Wikipedia:Main Page history/2022 January 14

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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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Did you know ...

Square pyramid of cannonballs

... that the number of cannonballs in a square pyramid (pictured) with $n$ cannonballs along each edge is ${\frac {n(n+1)(2n+1)}{6}}$ ?
... that Thomas Binger, the lead prosecutor in the trial of Kyle Rittenhouse, unsuccessfully ran for district attorney of Racine County, Wisconsin, in 2016?
... that after the War of Padua, the victorious Republic of Venice executed the lord of Padua and two of his sons?
... that before the Swiss surgeon René Prêtre specialized in surgeries on children's hearts, he treated victims of gunshots and stabbings at Bellevue Hospital in New York?
... that the series of protests that led to the 2021 North Kosovo crisis was caused by a ban on Serbian license plates from the Kosovan Government?
... that Bruce Davis and his son, who both played for UCLA in college and professionally for the Raiders, are one of the few father–son duos to have played on teams that reached the Super Bowl?
... that at the 2021 Dublin Bay South by-election, voters were asked to bring their own pen or pencil?
... that the sourdough starter at Diamond Bakery is believed to be more than a century old?

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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