Wikipedia:Main Page/Yesterday
From yesterday's featured article
![Dionysus Cup, possibly referencing the seventh Homeric Hymn](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/df/Exekias_Dionysos_Staatliche_Antikensammlungen_2044.jpg/132px-Exekias_Dionysos_Staatliche_Antikensammlungen_2044.jpg)
The Homeric Hymns are a collection of thirty-three ancient Greek hymns and one epigram. They praise deities of the Greek pantheon and retell mythological stories, such as the abduction of Persephone and the seduction of Anchises by Aphrodite. In antiquity, the hymns were generally attributed to the poet Homer: modern scholarship has established that they vary widely in date. Performances of the hymns may have taken place at sympotic banquets, religious festivals and royal courts. They may originally have been performed by singers accompanying themselves on a lyre. The hymns influenced Alexandrian and Roman poets, and both pagan and early Christian literature. They were first published in print by Demetrios Chalkokondyles in 1488–1489, while George Chapman made the first English translation of them in 1624. They have since influenced, among others, Handel, Goethe, Shelley, Tennyson and Cavafy. Their influence has also been traced in the novels of James Joyce and Neil Gaiman, and in the films of Alfred Hitchcock. (Full article...)
Did you know ...
- ... that China launched a military exercise in response to the inauguration of Lai Ching-te as president of Taiwan (pictured)?
- ... that although Luxembourg has won the Eurovision Song Contest five times, none of the winning artists representing the country have been native Luxembourgers?
- ... that basketball player Dylan Travis played for nine head coaches in nine years?
- ... that The Chinese in America documents how people in California, during the gold rush era, mailed their laundry to Hong Kong for cleaning?
- ... that a member of the House of Lords was the principal of a Canadian junior school?
- ... that despite being invented in the 2000s, Frutiger Aero was not named until 2017?
- ... that Roscoe "Red" Jackson was the last person to be publicly executed in the United States?
- ... that Cameroonian-born Joel Embiid opted to play for the 2024 U.S. Olympic basketball team instead of France in part because his son is American?
- ... that after Wong Sau Ying attempted to assassinate a British colonial official, the police and press began to associate the bob cut with anarchism?
In the news (For today)
- Ismail Haniyeh (pictured), the political leader of Hamas, is assassinated in Tehran, Iran.
- Landslides in Wayanad, India, kill more than 180 people.
- In Gaelic football, the All-Ireland Senior Football Championship concludes with Armagh defeating Galway in the final.
- Typhoon Gaemi leaves more than 70 people dead in the Philippines, China, Taiwan, and Cambodia.
On the previous day
August 1: Lughnasadh in the Northern Hemisphere; Buwan ng Wika begins in the Philippines; PLA Day in China (1927)
- 30 BC – War of Actium: Octavian defeated the forces of Mark Antony and Cleopatra at Alexandria, establishing Roman Egypt.
- 902 – Arab–Byzantine wars: Led by Ibrahim II of Ifriqiya, Aghlabid forces captured the Byzantine stronghold of Taormina, concluding the Muslim conquest of Sicily.
- 1774 – British scientist Joseph Priestley (pictured) liberated oxygen gas, corroborating the discovery of the element by the German-Swedish chemist Carl Wilhelm Scheele.
- 1892 – Jef Denyn hosted the world's first carillon concert at St. Rumbold's Cathedral in Mechelen, Belgium.
- 1911 – Harriet Quimby became the first woman to earn an Aero Club of America aviator certificate.
- Elizabeth Randles (b. 1800)
- Maria Mitchell (b. 1818)
- Lydia Litvyak (d. 1943)
- Abdalqadir as-Sufi (d. 2021)
Yesterday's featured picture
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The edible frog or green frog (Pelophylax kl. esculentus) is a common European frog species that occurs naturally from the northern half of France to western Russia and from Estonia and Denmark to Bulgaria and northern Italy, and is also an introduced species in other parts of the continent. It is a fertile hybrid of the pool frog (Pelophylax lessonae) and the marsh frog (P. ridibundus) and reproduces using hybridogenesis, a process in which one parental genome is excluded. The species is used as food – particularly in France, as well as Germany and Italy – as the delicacy frog legs. This edible frog was photographed in the Danube delta east of Tulcea, Romania. Photograph credit: Charles J. Sharp
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