Wikipedia:Main Page history/2019 January 16

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From today's featured article

The political career of John C. Breckinridge included service in the governments of Kentucky, the United States, and the Confederate States of America. Breckinridge (January 16, 1821 – May 17, 1875) was inaugurated in 1857 as James Buchanan's vice president, and remains the youngest person to ever hold the office. In 1860 he ran as the presidential candidate of a dissident group of Southern Democrats and won the electoral votes of most of the Southern states, but he finished a distant second among four candidates, losing the election to the Republican candidate, Abraham Lincoln. Most Southern states seceded, but Kentucky stayed in the Union. Previously elected to a U.S. Senate term that began in 1861, Breckenridge fled the state, joined the Confederate States Army, and was expelled from the Senate. Confederate President Jefferson Davis appointed him Secretary of War in February 1865. (Full article...)

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Did you know...

Baker Hotel

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... that the first-class cricketer and British Army racquets champion Henry Bond received honours from the British and Romanian governments for his service during the First World War?
... that the wolf spider Geolycosa pikei can immediately begin healing wounds on its abdomen?
... that Israeli scholar Esther Farbstein and a colleague discovered more than 100 personal Holocaust accounts in rabbinical works, a resource previously overlooked by Holocaust researchers?
... that the Ugandan military indiscriminately bombarded rebel fighters, civilians, and even their own forces during the Battle of Tororo?
... that actor Tim Franklin had his first on-screen kiss while portraying Home and Away character Colby Thorne?
... that historian Julius S. Scott did not agree with his publisher's suggested revisions to The Common Wind, so the book remained unpublished for thirty years?
... that Victor Bonney stained vaginas blue?

In the news

Paweł Adamowicz

In Poland, Gdańsk Mayor Paweł Adamowicz (pictured) dies after being stabbed on stage at a charity concert.
Fifteen people are killed when a Saha Airlines Boeing 707 crashes on landing at Fath Air Base, Iran.
In the midst of an ongoing constitutional crisis in Venezuela, the National Assembly disputes incumbent president Nicolás Maduro's victory in the May 2018 election and declares Juan Guaidó the acting president.
Félix Tshisekedi is declared the winner of the presidential election in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

On this day

January 16

Augustus of Prima Porta

27 BC – Gaius Octavianus (statue pictured) was given the titles Augustus and Princeps by the Roman Senate when he became the first Roman emperor.
1780 – Anglo-Spanish War: The Royal Navy gained their first major naval victory over their European enemies in the war when they defeated a Spanish squadron in the Battle of Cape St. Vincent.
1905 – Despite being blind in one eye, ice hockey player Frank McGee set the record for most goals in a Stanley Cup game when he scored 14 against the Dawson City Nuggets.
1920 – The League of Nations, the first worldwide intergovernmental organisation with a focus on peace and security, held its first council meeting in Paris.
1964 – The musical Hello, Dolly! opened at the St. James Theatre on Broadway, and went on to win ten Tony Awards, a record that stood for 37 years.

Nikephoros Choumnos (d. 1327) · William Hall-Jones (b. 1851) · Pauline Phillips (d. 2013)

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Today's featured picture

A light-emitting diode (LED) is a semiconductor light source that emits light when an electric current flows through it. When a current passes through the diode, which is formed of two different semiconductor materials, electrons are able to recombine with electron holes, releasing energy in the form of photons. This effect is called electroluminescence. The color of the light is determined by the energy required for electrons to cross the band gap of the semiconductor. White light is obtained by using multiple semiconductors or a layer of light-emitting phosphor on the semiconductor device. The earliest practical LEDs, which appeared in 1962, emitted low-intensity infrared and red light. Modern LEDs are available with high output in a range of visible, ultraviolet, and infrared wavelengths.

This picture shows three different views of an 11×44 LED matrix lapel name tag display. The top image is of a little over half of the display, the center image is a close-up of the LEDs in ambient light, and the bottom image is the LEDs in their own red light.

Photograph: Janke

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