Wikipedia:Main Page history/2020 December 11

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From today's featured article

Horse Shoe Brewery, c. 1800

The London Beer Flood was an accident at Meux & Co's Horse Shoe Brewery (pictured) on 17 October 1814. When one of the 22-foot-tall (6.7 m) wooden vats of fermenting porter burst, the pressure destroyed another vessel, and between 128,000 and 323,000 imperial gallons (580,000–1,470,000 l; 154,000–388,000 US gal) of beer were released. The resulting wave of porter destroyed the back wall of the brewery and swept into an area of slum-dwellings. Eight people were killed. The coroner's inquest returned a verdict that they had lost their lives "casually, accidentally and by misfortune". The brewery was nearly bankrupted by the event; it avoided collapse after a rebate from HM Excise on the lost beer. After the accident the brewing industry gradually stopped using large wooden vats, replacing them with lined concrete vessels. The brewery moved in 1921, and the Dominion Theatre is now where the brewery used to stand. (Full article...)

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Did you know ...

1959 cover of The Girls in 3-B

... that The Girls in 3-B (cover pictured) was one of the first pulp-fiction novels to give a lesbian a happy ending?
... that Silvio Meier has a street in Berlin and a square in Bologna named after him?
... that the release of the 2001 Hindi film Chori Chori Chupke Chupke was delayed for several months due to allegations that it was funded by the Mumbai underworld?
... that Condescending Wonka is one of the most popular internet memes?
... that Sheriff Paxton, who was called Canada's most beloved ice hockey official, would jokingly order a hanging for every individual who opposed him?
... that Tribhuvan and Gyanendra each became King of Nepal twice?
... that after U.S. women secured the right to vote in 1920, those from the South fought against paying a poll tax for the next 40 years?
... that medieval ceramics expert Jean Le Patourel was also an expert in the archaeology of dog collars?

In the news

COVID-19 pandemic: Disease; Virus; By location; Impact; Vaccines; Portal

Nana Akufo-Addo

Nana Akufo-Addo (pictured) is re-elected for a second term as President of Ghana.
In motorsport, Sébastien Ogier and Julien Ingrassia win the World Rally Championship, while Hyundai win the manufacturers' title.
Hayabusa2 successfully returns samples collected from asteroid 162173 Ryugu to Earth.
Zdravko Krivokapić takes office as Prime Minister of Montenegro, becoming the first independent to hold the post.

On this day

December 11: First day of Hanukkah (Judaism, 2020)

Workers clearing rubble in Cork following the fires

1789 – The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, one of the oldest public universities in the United States and the only one to award degrees in the 18th century, was chartered.
1886 – The London-based football club Arsenal, then known as Dial Square, played their first match on the Isle of Dogs.
1920 – Irish War of Independence: Following an Irish Republican Army ambush of a British Auxiliary patrol in Cork, British forces burned and looted numerous buildings in the city (aftermath pictured).
2005 – Demonstrations in Cronulla, a suburb of Sydney, against recent violence towards locals turned into a series of race riots.

Averroes (d. 1198)
Webster Paulson (b. 1837)
Emmanuelle Charpentier (b. 1968)

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From today's featured list

Orson Welles at work on The Magnificent Ambersons (1942)

American filmmaker Orson Welles is best remembered for his innovative work in radio, theatre, and film. He is widely considered one of the greatest and most influential directors of all time. While in his twenties, Welles directed a number of stage productions before creating the infamous 1938 radio adaptation of H. G. Wells's novel The War of the Worlds. Welles's directorial film debut Citizen Kane (1941), in which he also starred as Charles Foster Kane, garnered him the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay and nominations for Best Actor and Best Director. The film is consistently ranked as the greatest film ever made. Welles's second film was The Magnificent Ambersons (1942). He then directed the film-noir The Lady from Shanghai (1947), in which he also starred opposite his estranged wife Rita Hayworth. His 1951 film Othello won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival. (Full list...)

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Today's featured picture

The Bernina railway is a single-track, metre-gauge railway line forming part of the Rhaetian Railway. It links the spa resort of St. Moritz, in the canton of Graubünden, Switzerland, with the town of Tirano, in the Province of Sondrio, Italy. This photograph shows a train near the top of the Bernina Pass at an elevation of more than 2,100 metres (6,900 ft). The two ABe 4/4 multiple units have excess power with only two passenger cars, so some freight is carried along at the rear of the train.

Photograph credit: David Gubler

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