Wikipedia:Main Page history/2017 September 12

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From today's featured article

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depicting Steve Biko

Steve Biko (18 December 1946 – 12 September 1977) was a South African Xhosa anti-apartheid activist. Fighting racial segregation and white-minority rule in South Africa, Biko was at the forefront of the grassroots Black Consciousness Movement during the late 1960s and 1970s. Frustrated by the domination of white liberals in the anti-apartheid movement, he became a leading figure in the creation of the South African Students' Organisation in 1968. An African nationalist and African socialist, he was influenced by Frantz Fanon and the African-American Black Power movement. He promoted its slogan "black is beautiful", believing that black people needed to rid themselves of any sense of racial inferiority. In 1972, he helped found the Black People's Convention to spread these ideas among the wider population. Though the government banned Biko in 1973, he remained politically active. He was arrested in August 1977 and severely beaten by State security officers, resulting in his death. One of the earliest icons of the movement against apartheid, Biko is regarded as a political martyr. (Full article...)

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Did you know...

Peter Gabriel

... that Peter Gabriel (pictured) wrote "Biko" after learning of the death of Steve Biko in police custody on 12 September 1977?
... that Danish-born Jørgen Jensen was awarded the Victoria Cross for an action during which he pulled the pin from a hand grenade with his teeth?
... that Fran Dunphy has more wins than any other Penn Quakers basketball coach with 310 overall including 191 conference wins?
... that Una B. Herrick was called a "trailblazer" as she "made a place for women" at Montana State College?
... that Phyllodoce mucosa can form "roads" as they crawl across the beach towards carcasses?
... that Reinhard Peters conducted several new operas and Wilhelm Killmayer's Tre Canti di Leopardi, and a number of his recordings were chosen for the CD compilation Musik in Deutschland 1950–2000?
... that during the 2010 Winter Olympics, the United States Postal Service deployed a Mobile Mail-Screening Station to Vancouver, Canada, to detect mail-borne nuclear threats?
... that Reid Moore, Jr. ran for a Florida House of Representatives seat in 1976 with the campaign slogan "We need More in Tallahassee"?

In the news

Hurricane Irma

Hurricane Irma (satellite image pictured) kills at least 46 people across the Caribbean islands and the U.S. state of Florida.
A magnitude 8.1 earthquake strikes Guatemala and Mexico, killing more than 90 people.
Monsoon flooding kills nearly 1,300 people and affects 45 million others in India, Pakistan, Nepal, and Bangladesh.
North Korea conducts its sixth nuclear test.
The European X-ray free-electron laser is inaugurated in Hamburg, Germany.

On this day...

September 12

Mae Jemison

490 BC – Greco-Persian Wars: Athenians and their Plataean allies turned back the first Persian invasion of Greece in the Battle of Marathon.
1848 – Switzerland became a federal state with the adoption of a new constitution.
1910 – Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 8, one of the largest-scale choral works in the classical concert repertoire, was first performed in Munich.
1942 – World War II: The Imperial Japanese Army began the Battle of Edson's Ridge in an effort to retake Henderson Field on Guadalcanal.
1980 – The Turkish Armed Forces ousted Prime Minister Süleyman Demirel and would rule the country for three years before democracy was restored.
1992 – Aboard Space Shuttle Endeavour, American Mae Jemison (pictured) became the first black woman in space.
2015 – An explosion involving illegally stored mining detonators Petlawad in the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh kills at least 105 people and injures more than 150 others.

Carl Eytel (b. 1862) · Fitz Hugh Ludlow (d. 1870) · Raymond Burr (d. 1993)

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Today's featured picture

Kings' Fairy Tale, a painting by the Lithuanian painter, composer, and writer Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis (1875–1911) completed in 1908–1909. During his lifetime, Čiurlionis created about 300 paintings, composed about 400 pieces of music, and wrote many literary works and poems. Considered representative of the fin de siècle epoch, he contributed to the symbolism and art nouveau movements.

Painting: Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis

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