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Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2015-07-22/Featured content

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The sleep of reason produces monsters



This Signpost "Featured content" report covers material promoted from 05 July to 11 July.


Three Featured articles were promoted this week.

  • Capon Chapel (nominated by West Virginian) Capon Chapel is situated two miles south of Capon Bridge, West Virginia, USA. It's a small church, built from logs in the 1850s. The area was a stronghold of the Baptists in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and there was probably a Baptist church on the site. The first burial in the cemetery occurred in 1816, but the first certain mention of a church was in a land grant of 1852, referring to a house of worship "for the use of all orthodox Christians". Primarily used by the Baptists until the early part of last century, it became a stop on the local Methodist preachers' circuit, and as Baptist use declined, the Methodists became the chapel's users and carers. Today it is part of the United Methodist Church.
  • Tom Simpson (nominated by BaldBoris) One of Britain's most successful racing cyclists, Tom Simpson competed victoriously in several professional cycle races, including the Tour de France, the Tour of Flanders, the Bordeaux–Paris race, the 1958 British Empire and Commonwealth Games, and the 1956 Summer Olympics. Simpson learned to ride the bicycle at the age of twelve and a year later he joined a cycling club where he participated in his first road race. Simpson collapsed and died at the age of 29 in the thirteenth stage of the 1967 Tour de France, during the ascent of Mont Ventoux. His collapse was caused by high daytime temperatures (reaching up to 53° C) combined with his having mixed amphetamines and alcohol.
  • Witches' Sabbath (The Great He-Goat) (nominated by Ceoil) An excellent art article from our art expert Ceoil and company. Francisco Goya painted Witches' Sabbath in the early 1820s, in oils on the plaster wall of his home near Madrid. It's one of a set of fourteen murals that Goya left to his grandson, along with the house, when the artist left for exile. Goya gave neither title nor explanation for any of them. The Sabbath has been interpreted as Satan in the form of a goat, dominating a group of fearful witches. To the right sits an enigmatic young girl. Goya was an artist of peculiar imagination, who in his so-called Black Paintings mocked clerical institutions and ridiculed the stereotypes of witches and the grotesque side of their festivities and ceremonies. He portrayed ugly and malformed figures whose hideousness he accentuated with the use of loose brushwork. The grotesque faces provide a scary, frenzied atmosphere to his pictures. They have been seen as his artistic response to a "first-hand and acute awareness of panic, terror, fear and hysteria." Or something like that....

Two Featured lists were promoted this week.

  • 73rd Academy Awards (nominated by Birdienest81) Honoring films from the year 2000, the Best Picture Oscar went to Gladiator, Ridley Scott's Roman fighting epic which was probably the worst of the five nominees from that year. It took home five wins, including Best Actor for Russell Crowe, but notably no wins for its director or screenwriters, a first for a Best Picture since 1949. Best Director went to Steven Soderbergh; his films Traffic and Erin Brockovich both received nominations for Best Picture and Best Director, the latter nomination making him the third person to ever get double nominations for directing. Playing the title role in the David and Goliath story Erin Brockovich won Julia Roberts Best Actress. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon didn't win any of the major awards it was nominated for, but picked up four Oscars, including one for its stunning score by Tan Dun. Two of the best films of 2000, O Brother, Where Art Thou? and Almost Famous, were snubbed, receiving only nominations for minor categories, and no wins.
  • List of works by Dorothy L. Sayers (nominated by SchroCat) Dorothy Leigh Sayers was a prolific English intellectual writer, essayist, poet, playwright and Christian humanist. She is best known nowadays for her "whodunits" featuring Lord Peter Wimsey, the gentleman detective, who has as his special hobby solving mysteries. He is a funny and sophisticated character – not the hardboiled trenchcoat-wearing detective, but the well educated and cerebral gentleman, with exquisite taste in wine, cars, clothing and books. Her first detective novel, Whose Body?, from 1923, features the naked body of a man wearing pince-nez, left in someone's bathtub as a joke. In the 1930s Sayers ceased writing crime stories and turned instead to religious plays and essays, and to translating literary works, from medieval French and Italian into English. These included Tristan by Thomas of Britain, and Dante's Divine Comedy. The latter is considered one of the greatest works of world literature; her translation of the Divine Comedy is Sayers's magnum opus.
Hubble Space Telescope's 25 years anniversary is celebrated with a picture of celestial fireworks: the giant cluster of stars called Westerlund 2
Napoleon on the gold 20 franc
Lyriothemis acigastra
Netherlands East Indies Java Rupee from 1803
Wrocław Główny railway station's platform


Twenty-nine Featured pictures were promoted this week.

The Great He-Goat