Wikipedia:Main Page history/2020 May 12

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From today's featured article

Superliner I Sightseer lounge

The Superliner is a type of bilevel intercity railroad passenger car used by Amtrak, the national rail passenger carrier in the United States. The design was based on Budd's Hi-Level vehicles, employed by the Santa Fe Railway on its El Capitan trains. Pullman-Standard built 284 cars, known as Superliner I (lounge pictured), from 1975 to 1981; Bombardier Transportation built 195, known as Superliner II, from 1991 to 1996. Car types include coaches, dining cars, lounges, and sleeping cars. Most passenger spaces are on the upper level, which features a row of windows on both sides. Boarding is on the lower level; passengers climb up a center stairwell to access the upper level. The first Superliner I cars entered service in February 1979, with deliveries continuing through 1981. Amtrak assigned the cars to both long-distance and short-distance trains in the Western United States. The first permanent assignment, in October 1979, was to the Chicago–Seattle Empire Builder. (Full article...)

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Rip Rapson

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In the news

COVID-19 pandemic

Wide-field image of HR 6819

A gas leak in Andhra Pradesh, India, kills thirteen people and injures over a thousand others.
Astronomers announce the discovery of the first black hole located in a star system visible to the naked eye (pictured).
In the Philippines, the leading television network ABS-CBN is ordered to stop broadcasting by the National Telecommunications Commission.

On this day

May 12: Lag BaOmer (Judaism, 2020)

Semyon Timoshenko

907 – Zhu Wen forced Emperor Ai to abdicate, ending the Tang dynasty after nearly three centuries of ruling China.
1846 – The Donner Party, an American pioneer group which became known for resorting to cannibalism when they became trapped in the Sierra Nevadas, left Independence, Missouri, for California.
1942 – World War II: Soviet forces under Marshal Semyon Timoshenko (pictured) launched a major offensive in eastern Ukraine, but were encircled and destroyed by German troops two weeks later.
1982 – Juan María Fernández y Krohn attempted to assassinate Pope John Paul II with a bayonet in Fátima, Portugal.
1998 – Four students were shot and killed by Indonesian soldiers at Trisakti University in Jakarta, which led to widespread riots and eventually the resignation of President Suharto nine days later.

Pompeo Colonna (b. 1479)
Rachel Chiesley, Lady Grange (d. 1745)
Malin Åkerman (b. 1978)

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Today's featured picture

Jules Massenet (12 May 1842 – 13 August 1912) was a French composer of the Romantic era, best known for his operas. Between 1867 and his death, he wrote more than forty stage works in a wide variety of styles, from opéra comique to grand depictions of classical myths, romantic comedies and lyric dramas, as well as oratorios, cantatas and ballets. Massenet had a good sense of the theatre and of what would succeed with the Parisian public. Despite some miscalculations, he produced a series of successes that made him the leading opera composer in France in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. By the time of his death, he was regarded as old-fashioned; his works, however, began to be favourably reassessed during the mid-20th century, and many have since been staged and recorded. This photograph of Massenet was taken by French photographer Eugène Pirou in 1875.

Photograph credit: Eugène Pirou; restored by Adam Cuerden

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