Wikipedia:Main Page history/2021 August 11

Arthur Sullivan (1896–1937) was an Australian recipient of the Victoria Cross. Born in South Australia, Sullivan enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force during World War I. Sent to the United Kingdom, he completed training after the Armistice came into effect. Wanting to see active service, he sought his discharge and enlisted in the British Army with the North Russia Relief Force, part of the Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War. In the early morning of 11 August 1919 he was a member of a rearguard withdrawing across the Sheika River in North Russia. As his platoon crossed the river on a one-plank bridge, it came under intense fire from Bolshevik troops, and four men fell into the river. Sullivan jumped in and rescued all four, one by one; he was awarded the Victoria Cross for his actions. He was part of the Australian Coronation Contingent in London for the coronation of King George VI in 1937 when he died of head injuries received in a fall. (Full article...)

1820 engraving of a Staghound

• ... that the last pack of Staghounds (example pictured) in England were those of the North Devon Hunt, which pursued stag in the royal forests of Exmoor until 1825?
• ... that peasant leader Medardo Mairena was the sixth aspiring presidential candidate in the 2021 Nicaraguan general election to be arrested?
• ... that part of the ceiling at the 181st Street station collapsed two days after funding was allocated to repair damage from a similar collapse two years prior?
• ... that a reviewer wrote that "few tenors on disc can rival the German Rainer Trost" about his 1992 performance as Ferrando in Mozart's Così fan tutte in Paris, with conductor John Eliot Gardiner?
• ... that mixed-use stadium districts around major sports venues often include public squares, office space, hotels and residential units?
• ... that the freighter John Mitchell was the costliest shipwreck on the Great Lakes in 1911?
• ... that instead of fighting in battle, female vassals in the Kingdom of Jerusalem were obliged to render the service of marriage to their lord by marrying one of three candidates proposed to them?
• ... that Mary Dunn was reported to have had "many a free ride" in ice hockey, when men "would just lift her up and dump her elsewhere"?

Krystsina Tsimanouskaya

• The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change releases the first part of its Sixth Assessment Report on the state of knowledge of climate change and its effects.
• Belarusian sprinter Krystsina Tsimanouskaya (pictured) travels to Poland on a humanitarian visa after attempts by the Belarus Olympic Committee to repatriate her against her will.
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August 11: Independence Day in Chad (1960)

Hussein of Jordan

• 106 – The region of Dacia, comprising parts of modern Romania, became a province of the Roman Empire.
• 1492 – The first papal conclave to be held in the Sistine Chapel elected Roderic Borja as Pope Alexander VI to succeed Innocent VIII.
• 1786 – Francis Light founded George Town, the first British settlement in Southeast Asia and the present-day capital of the Malaysian state of Penang.
• 1952 – King Talal of Jordan was forced to abdicate due to health reasons and was succeeded by his eldest son Hussein (pictured).
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  music.