User:Lar/DYK

My "Did You Know?"s

A pithy quote

The objective of FAs is to display the best work of the community; that of DYKs is to invite others to improve the articles.

--Gurubrahma 03:02, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

That sums it up nicely for me. Every one of the articles I've had selected so far has been vastly improved by other editors while it was visible on the main page. What a great feeling... It's what Wikipedia is all about. I've been fortunate to have several articles selected.

Summary information

So anyway, without further ado, here's the info on articles by myself (unless otherwise noted, all are self nominations)... All articles are DYK, some are GA and one is even FA.

Article	Create Date or Mainspace Go-live Date	DYK selection date	Seq. Num
American Bridge Company a builder of many large bridges around the world, part of USS for a long time.	20:43, 25 December 2005	article selected 27 December, 2005	1
Sky Ride a Transporter bridge at the Chicago Century of Progress) Exposition. Steinman's only amusement ride.	20:17, 29 December 2005	article selected 2 January 2006	2
Orthotropic deck a weight saving deck used in bridge refits to increase carrying capacity and save money.	01:13, 1 January 2006	article selected 4 January 2006	3
Steel dam a rare dam type, only 2 examples survive in the US, one near my alma mater MTU.	21:48, 19 January 2006	article selected 22 January 2006	4
Hutsonville Bridge a David B. Steinman self-anchored bridge, the scrapper offered to donate the scrapping fee to save it from the torch to no avail.	17:23, 20 January 2006	article selected 23 January 2006	5
Coraopolis Bridge Formerly the third Pittsburgh Sixth Street Bridge, it was floated, partially disassembled, to be reused across a different river.	11:47, 23 January 2006	article selected 30 January 2006	6
The Observatory (band) A band I found while working in Singapore on a short assignment.	23:18, 2 March 2006	article selected 6 March 2006	7
Kingston-Port Ewen Suspension Bridge I used to live near this bridge, and it was pivotal in the career of David B. Steinman so seemed a natural to do an article on.	00:12, 1 April 2006	article selected 4 April 2006	8
Ashfork-Bainbridge Steel Dam Second of three Steel Dams in the US. Just one more to go and I will have done all three...	21:35, 12 April 2006	article selected 13 April 2006	9
Stamp mill Stumbled into the need for this article working on Redridge Steel Dam. User:Apwoolrich gave me the seed for it after I asked some questions about hammer mills, which are not the same thing.	15:10, 12 April 2006	article selected 14 April 2006	10
Teresa Bagioli Sickles Found her trolling around at random in US history, what a juicy story!!!! Notorious womanizing US representative (and Tammany Hall machine man) Daniel Sickles gets stepped out on by his toast of the town socialite wife, blows away the lover (the U.S. Attorney son of Francis Scott Key, no less) and it's the talk of the nation's papers for months. Beats the rap (with the first successful US use of the insanity defense), thanks to his dream team of lawyers (a future US Secretary of War among them). Then the papers turn on him and he goes on to become one of the most incompetent Union generals in the Civil War... Wow!	10:57, 29 April 2006	article selected 2 May 2006 (selected as GA 15 January 2007)	11
Waldo-Hancock Bridge, another David B. Steinman bridge I've had on ice for a while. This one featured a new tower design and prestressed suspendor cables (both innovations at the time), and came in so far under budget that the bridge authority built another bridge with the leftover funds!	20:46, 1 May 2006	article selected 4 May 2006	12
Gaylord Building, the subject of a Lego model I built for the National Trust for Historic Preservation "Build the Trust" competition, I had all this background info in my head, and a folder full of prototype photos, so it seemed fitting to do an article. Started working on it in January, 5 edits over 5 months to go public...	02:11, 6 May 2006	article selected 8 May 2006	13
Hell Below, my first movie article. Created because it was a red link in Merritt-Chapman & Scott. They blew up a destroyer for the movie to simulate a torpedo hit. Probably one of their more interesting contracts!	11:58, 15 May 2006	article selected 15 May 2006	14
Merritt-Chapman & Scott, a famed salvage and undersea contractor. Marshalled the largest construction fleet ever assembled to build the Mackinac Bridge. Had been a red link for a long time.	01:48, 14 May 2006	article selected 16 May 2006	15
Artrain USA, ...it's art! It's a train! It's based in Ann Arbor, Michigan. What's not to like? When I saw this in TRAINS I knew I had to do an article.	14:31, 18 June 2006	article selected 22 June 2006	16
Joyland Amusement Park, a small regional family owned amusement park I happened to find out about in Lubbock, Texas. It has big plans for the future though.	23:54, 1 July 2006	article selected 7 July 2006	17
Brass ring, an important added attraction of early carousels. The phrase grab the brass ring has entered the lexicon, meaning to take your best shot and go for it.	00:18, 11 October 2006	article selected 12 October 2006	18
Ada Covered Bridge, one of 4 publicly owned covered bridges in the state of Michigan, this bridge is in my home town and I just got inspired to write an article about it after being out one fine fall day and taking pictures of it...	18:34, 9 October 2006	article selected 13 October 2006	19
Thornapple River, a tributary of the Grand. The Ada Covered Bridge crosses it. But it had no article. Now it does. I was surprised how much there was to say, actually.	21:29, 19 December 2006 Lar (started on 17 Dec)	article selected 24 December 2006	20
Canoe livery, a kind of business, having to do with renting canoes. In writing the Thornapple River article, I discovered we didn't have an article for it. Now we do.	13:33, 23 December 2006	article selected 27 December 2006	21
Whites Bridge, the second of 3 local covered bridges I have pictures of. Spans the Flat River, and uses the Brown truss. Just have Fallasburg Bridge left to do now!	19:25, 27 December 2006 (started 22 Dec)	article selected 29 December 2006	22
Brown truss, the truss design used by Ada Covered Bridge, Whites Bridge and Fallasburg Bridge and ... not very many other bridges ever. These local bridge articles needed the truss description. This article caused Google Patents to get rescued from deletion since I needed it in a citation.	23:00, 27 December 2006	article selected 1 January 2007	23
Fallasburg Bridge in the Fallasburg Historic District, last of the three Brown truss bridges I have pictures, information, and interest in. This one, I was able to get some particularly gorgeous photos taken. But one article complete means another to write, now the historic district needs one. Since MTU industrial archaeologists did a dig there, it seems notable enough even if it wasn't on the National Register of Historic Places, which it is.	1 January 2007 (started 27 December)	article selected 5 January 2007	24
Antonio Bagioli The father of Teresa Bagioli Sickles (see above), Italian immigrant to the US. A noted composer and music educator. Came to the US as director of an Italian Opera company, fell in love with Maria Cooke, a ward of Lorenzo da Ponte, stayed... cannot definitively pin down rumors that he was cuckolded by Daniel Sickles (while both were staying at the da Ponte household) who later married his daughter Teresa...	19 January 2007 (went live 12 August 2007)	article selected 17 August 2007	25
SS Christopher Columbus The only passenger whaleback, and reportedly the largest ship on the Great Lakes at the time of her construction, she was designed and built by Alexander McDougall for the 1893 Worlds Columbian Exposition in Chicago, Illinois and carried over 2M passengers in her career before she was scrapped in 1936. Getting her to GA took two tries, but getting her to FA was relatively smooth, all the contributors only had comments, no one started out objecting. She made the Wikirage top 100 articles by edits 3 day list on her last day before promotion.	18 August 2007 (started 17 August)	article selected 24 August 2007 (selected as GA 19 October 2007) (promoted to FA 28 March 2008)	26
Croton Dam (Michigan) (or Croton Hydroelectric Plant) is a dam and powerplant complex on the Muskegon River in Croton Township, Newaygo County, Michigan. It was built in 1907. 8850Kw... pretty ho hum, except it was the first complex to transmit power over 50 miles, and the first one to use 100 kilovolt + power lines to do so.	7 September (started 17 August)	article selected 12 September 2007 (selected as GA 1 October 2007)	27
An Ore dock is a large structure used for loading ore (typically from railway cars or ore jennies) onto ships which then carry the ore to steelworks or to transshipment points. Most are found on the upper Great Lakes. Article came about because I saw that ore dock was a red link in the IR&HB article	23 January 2008 (contrary to my usual practice, article was started in main space)	article selected 26 January 2008	28
The SS Charles W. Wetmore was a whaleback sent down the St. Lawrence River to London, England to promote the design. She then carried parts and equipment to Everett, Washington to aid in the construction of the SS City of Everett.	7 February (contrary to my usual practice, article was started in main space)	article selected 12 February 2008	29
The U.S. Army Transportation Museum is a museum located at Fort Eustis home of the Army Transportation Corps, featuring close to 100 land, air and sea(!) vehicles used by the US Army and some exhibits inside the museum buildings. It has the Eve of Destruction, named after a protest song, the only surviving example of a Vietnam era gun truck. This one I had in a sandbox for 2 years (!! ... see this blog post ) but someone else recently did a stub. That spurred me on to beefing it up massively.	userspace version started 7 April 2006. Someone else started article 22 November 2007. DYK qualifying edits done 5 March 2008.	article selected 10 March 2008	30
Helping E work on Elizabeth F. Ellet and the gift book article led me to this abolitionist fundraising gift book, The Liberty Bell which was published by Maria Weston Chapman and featured two works of anti-slavery poetry Elizabeth Barrett Browning during the book's 15 year publication run, as well as works by many others.	Changed from a redirect to a 7K article (in one edit :) ) on 16 April 2008.	article selected 23 April 2008	31
I got a note from someone that incidentally talked about persimmons and had a link to a book by Julia Morton... I discovered she had no article and on a whim decided to fix that.	Created as a brand new 9K article (in one edit :) ) on 16 October 2008	article selected 23 October 2008	32
Serendipity... I happened to see Tell_us_about_your_Wikipedia on Meta, which led me to Tok Pisin and Hiri Motu. Reading the latter, I learned it was formerly called "Police Motu", and saw the link to Royal Papua Constabulary which was red. My curiosity was piqued and I started doing some research and Royal Papua New Guinea Constabulary was the result.	Started as a stub 14 November 2008	article selected 19 November 2008	33
Serendipity... ArbCom dramahs led me to look up "All Animals are Equal"... which led to Animal Farm (1954 film) which had Handling Ships as a red link. Not a red link any more. Who would have thought the first feature length animated British film was made for the Admiralty as a training film "to stop young people from driving a ship like it was a car." Apparently battleships dent easily?	Created in one edit 20 December 2008	article selected 23 December 2008	34
Serendipity... After watching the 2009 Kentucky Derby and the amazing win by Mine That Bird, as well as hearing all the back story around General Quarters, a "claimer", I looked up claiming races, to learn more, and found a red link. Not a red link any more.	Created in one edit 3 May 2009	article selected 12 May 2009	35
We recently holidayed in Alaska and while driving up the Richardson Highway to Fairbanks, happened to stop at a historic roadhouse. The Tanana River is very pretty there and we got lots of pictures. On return I was surprised to find a red link in the... NRHP list for the area. After a little work, Rika's Landing Roadhouse is the result. The roadhouse is in the Big_Delta_Historic_District, temporarily redirected.	Created 7 August 2009	article selected 16 August 2009 (selected as GA 30 August 2009)	36
The roadhouse article involved mention of the Alaska Road Commission, a redlink. Since Rika's was on the Richardson Highway, named for Brigadier General Wilds P. Richardson, first ARC commissioner, that needed fixing. Writing it found this deliciously ironic statement by commissioners about the commission having "no pretense of having built roads adapted for automobile travel". Found some neat pics to go with it, and one was selected as the lead.	Created 29 August 2009	article selected 07 September 2009	37

See also

• Wikipedia:List of Wikipedians by number of DYKs