Wikipedia:Main Page history/2021 December 20

Welcome to Wikipedia,

the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit.

6,425,756 articles in English

From today's featured article

Ellen Pompeo, who plays Meredith Grey

Full article...

)

Recently featured:

Did you know ...

Kilvidi Seshachari

... that Kilvidi Seshachari (pictured), the wicket-keeper for the first all-Indian cricket team to tour England, was recruited by the Maharaja of Natore to defeat the all-European Calcutta Cricket Club?
... that Hyun Ji Shin was photographed by Karl Lagerfeld in his Chanel campaign before his death?
... that Raoul Servais invented a new technique for combining animation and live action for his short film Harpya?
... that a formerly abandoned sugar mill is now a rest area on the Trans-Java Toll Road?
... that the Germanic neopagan group Verein für germanisches Heidentum dismisses völkisch religiosity by associating it with monotheism and dualism?
... that Daniel Barclay Williams, Virginia's first Black teacher of classics, was described as "a one man department"?
... that the Istanbul Waste Power Plant, opened last month, is Turkey's first waste-to-energy facility?
... that a strip club manager in Toronto
sued a company that did not employ him for wrongful dismissal
?

In the news

Typhoon Rai

Typhoon Rai (satellite image shown) results in at least 169 deaths in the Philippines.
A building fire in Osaka, Japan, kills 24 people.
Siaosi Sovaleni is elected as prime minister by the Legislative Assembly of Tonga.
A fuel tanker truck explodes in Cap-Haïtien, Haiti, killing at least 75 people.

On this day

December 20

Cardiff City Hall

1860 – South Carolina became the first of eleven slave states to declare secession from the U.S., leading to the eventual creation of the Confederate States of America and later the American Civil War.
1948 – Indonesian National Revolution: Dutch forces captured Yogyakarta, the Indonesian Republic's temporary capital, and seized President Sukarno.
City Hall pictured) was recognised as the capital of Wales
.

1988 – The United Nations Convention Against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances governing international cooperation against the illegal drug trade was signed in Vienna.
1995 – American Airlines Flight 965 crashed into a mountain in Buga, Colombia, killing 151 passengers and 8 crew members.

John Bell (d. 1820)
Kan'ichi Asakawa (b. 1873)
Beatrice Beeby (d. 1991)

More anniversaries:

From today's featured list

Uranus and its six largest moons compared at their proper relative sizes and relative positions

Uranus, the seventh planet of the Solar System, has 27 known moons, most of which are named after characters that appear in, or are mentioned in, the works of William Shakespeare and Alexander Pope. Uranus's moons are divided into three groups: thirteen inner moons, five major moons, and nine irregular moons. The inner and major moons all have prograde orbits, while orbits of the irregulars are mostly retrograde. The inner moons are small dark bodies that share common properties and origins with Uranus's rings. The five major moons are ellipsoidal, indicating that they reached hydrostatic equilibrium at some point in their past (and may still be in equilibrium), and four of them show signs of internally driven processes such as canyon formation and volcanism on their surfaces. William Herschel discovered the first two moons, Titania and Oberon, in 1787. The other three ellipsoidal moons were discovered in 1851 by William Lassell (Ariel and Umbriel) and in 1948 by Gerard Kuiper (Miranda). (Full list...)

Recently featured:

Today's featured picture

The Supreme Court of the United Kingdom is the final court of appeal in the United Kingdom for all civil cases, as well as for criminal cases originating in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. It also hears cases of the greatest public or constitutional importance affecting the whole population. The court is located in the Middlesex Guildhall on Parliament Square, London; this photograph depicts the interior of Court 1, the largest of the three courtrooms in the building.

Photograph credit: David Iliff

Recently featured: