Wikipedia:Today's featured article/August 2016
<< | Today's featured articles for August 2016 | >> | ||||
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The Thorpe affair of the 1970s was a British political and sex scandal that ended the career of Jeremy Thorpe, the leader of the Liberal Party and Member of Parliament for North Devon. The scandal arose from allegations by Norman Scott of a homosexual affair, at a time when such relationships were illegal in the United Kingdom. Thorpe denied any such liaison and largely managed to avoid public and press scrutiny, but Scott's allegations were a persistent threat for years, endangering the Liberal Party's mid-1970s revival. Unsuccessful attempts to buy Scott's silence and frighten him culminated in 1975 with the shooting of his dog by a hired gunman. The police investigation and publicity forced Thorpe's resignation. He and three others were charged with conspiracy to murder Scott, but the main prosecution witnesses were undermined by, among other factors, their financial arrangements with newspapers. All four defendants were acquitted, although there were later claims that important prosecution evidence had been suppressed by the police. Thorpe's reputation was damaged irreparably by evidence that was uncontested, and he did not return to public life. (Full article...)
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The Waddesdon Bequest is a collection left to the British Museum in Baron Ferdinand Rothschild's will in 1898, taken from his New Smoking Room at Waddesdon Manor. It includes almost 300 pieces of jewellery, plate, enamel, carvings, glass and maiolica. Earlier than most objects is the Holy Thorn Reliquary, probably created in the 1390s in Paris for John, Duke of Berry. The wide-ranging collection is in the tradition of a treasure house, such as those owned by the Renaissance princes of Europe. Most of the objects are from late Renaissance Europe; there are several important medieval pieces, and outliers from classical antiquity and medieval Syria. Rothschild selected intricate, superbly executed, highly decorated and rather ostentatious works of the Late Gothic, Renaissance and Mannerist periods for this collection. Few of the objects relied on the Baroque sculptural movement for their effect, though several come from periods and places where many Baroque pieces were being made. A new display for the collection, which under the terms of the bequest must be kept and displayed together, opened in 2015. (Full article...)
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The 1998 FA Charity Shield was the 76th in a series of annual English football matches organised by The Football Association and usually played between the winners of the previous season's Premier League and FA Cup competitions. It was contested on 9 August 1998 by Arsenal, who won both titles the previous season, and Manchester United, the league runners-up. Watched by a crowd of 67,342 at Wembley Stadium (pictured), Arsenal took the lead when Marc Overmars scored 11 minutes before half-time. They extended their lead in the second half, as Overmars and Nicolas Anelka found Christopher Wreh, who put the ball into an empty net at the second attempt. In the 72nd minute, Arsenal scored a third goal, when Anelka got around Jaap Stam in the penalty box and shot the ball past goalkeeper Peter Schmeichel. Arsenal won the match 3–0, United's first defeat in the Shield in 13 years. United completed a treble of trophies in the 1998–99 season, winning the league, the FA Cup and the UEFA Champions League. (Full article...)
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Albert Ketèlbey (9 August 1875 – 26 November 1959) was an English composer, conductor, and pianist, best known for his light orchestral music. He was born in Birmingham, moving to London in 1889 to study at Trinity College of Music where he became musical director of the Vaudeville Theatre. For many years Ketèlbey worked for music publishers including Chappell & Co. and the Columbia Graphophone Company, providing arrangements for smaller orchestras. He composed accompanying music for silent films; In a Monastery Garden (1915) sold over a million copies and brought widespread notice. Later soundtracks for exotic scenes such as In a Persian Market (1920, cover pictured), In a Chinese Temple Garden (1923), and In the Mystic Land of Egypt (1931), became best-sellers; by the late 1920s Ketèlbey was Britain's first millionaire composer. His popularity waned during the Second World War. In 1949 he retired to the Isle of Wight, where he died in obscurity. In a 2003 poll by the BBC's Your Hundred Best Tunes, Bells across the Meadows was voted the thirty-sixth most popular tune of all time. (Full article...)
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Part of the Looking Glass Studios video games featured topic.
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The Seduction of Ingmar Bergman is the 22nd album by the American rock group Sparks, released on August 14, 2009. The duo's first work in the radio musical or pop opera genre, the album is built around an imaginary visit to Hollywood by Swedish film director Ingmar Bergman in the mid-1950s. Its storyline focuses on the divides between European and American culture, between art and commerce. Unlike other Sparks albums, the work is conceived as a single piece, to be listened to as a whole, rather than a collection of stand-alone songs. The work was commissioned by Sveriges Radio Radioteatern, the radio drama department of Sweden's national radio broadcaster. First released in the Swedish broadcast version in August 2009, with an English-language version following in November 2009, it features a cast of Swedish and American actors and a variety of musical styles ranging from opera to vaudeville and pop. The album's recording was a collaborative effort, with music and English vocals recorded by Sparks in the United States, and Swedish vocals recorded by Sveriges Radio in Stockholm. (Full article...)
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The 24th Waffen Mountain Division of the SS Karstjäger was a German mountain infantry division of the Waffen-SS during World War II. Formed in July 1944 from the SS Volunteer Karstwehr Battalion, it was a division in name only, and was soon reduced to a brigade. Built around a company in existence since 1942, the unit consisted mainly of Yugoslav Volksdeutsche (ethnic Germans) and recruits from South Tyrol. It was primarily involved in fighting partisans in the Karst Plateau on the frontiers of Yugoslavia, Italy, and Austria; the mountainous terrain required specialized mountain troops and equipment. It also saw action in the wake of the Italian surrender when it moved to disarm Italian troops and protect ethnic German communities in Italy. At the end of the war it successfully fought to keep passes into Austria open, allowing German units to escape the Balkans and surrender to British forces. The remnants of the unit became some of the last Germans to lay down their arms when they surrendered on 9 May 1945. (Full article...)
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Of the four operas written by the youthful composer George Frideric Handel (pictured) between 1703 and 1706 when he lived and worked in Hamburg, only the first, Almira, has survived complete. The music for the others is lost apart from a few orchestral fragments. Handel learned the rudiments of opera composition while employed as a violinist at the Oper am Gänsemarkt, Hamburg's famous opera house, and was able to get Almira and a second opera, Nero, performed there during the temporary absence of the theatre's director, Reinhard Keiser. Almira was successful, Nero less so. Handel's last two Hamburg operas, Florindo and Daphne, were not produced at the Gänsemarkt before Handel left Hamburg. No music that can be definitively traced to Nero has been identified, although scholars have speculated that some of it may have been used in later works, particularly Agrippina, which has a similar plot and characters. Fragments of music from Florindo and Daphne have been preserved, although without the vocal parts, and some of these elements have been incorporated into an orchestral suite first recorded in 2012. (Full article...)
August 24
Part of the Voalavo featured topic.
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In a nuclear weapons incident on 29–30 August 2007, United States Air Force warheads were not protected by mandatory security precautions. Six AGM-129 ACM cruise missiles, each loaded with a W80-1 variable yield nuclear warhead, were mistakenly loaded onto an Air Force B-52H heavy bomber at Minot Air Force Base and transported to Barksdale Air Force Base. The nuclear warheads in the missiles were supposed to have been removed before taking the missiles from their storage bunker. The missiles with the nuclear warheads were not reported missing and remained mounted to the aircraft at both Minot and Barksdale for 36 hours. After an investigation, four Air Force commanders were relieved of their commands, and nuclear weapons operations at Minot were suspended. In 2008, Secretary of the Air Force Michael Wynne and Chief of Staff of the Air Force General T. Michael Moseley were forced to resign, in part over this incident. In response to recommendations by a review committee, a new Air Force Global Strike Command assumed control of all Air Force nuclear bombers, missiles, and personnel. (Full article...)
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