Wikipedia:Main Page history/2020 October 29

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From today's featured article

Portrait of Mariana of Austria is a 1652 or 1653 oil-on-canvas painting by Diego Velázquez, the leading artist of the Spanish Golden Age. Its subject, Dona Mariana (known as Maria Anna), was the daughter of Emperor Ferdinand III and Maria Anna of Spain, and was nineteen years old when the painting was completed. Although vivacious and fun-loving in life, she is given an unhappy expression in Velázquez's portrait. The painting is bathed in harmonious shades of black and red, and her face is heavily made up. Her right hand rests on the back of a chair, and she holds a lace handkerchief in her left hand. Her bodice is decorated with jewellery, including a gold necklace, bracelets and a large gold brooch. The clock placed on the scarlet drapery behind her indicates her status. Three full-length versions of the portrait survive, as well as a number of half-length variants. The version in the Museo del Prado (detail pictured) is known to be the original and is dated on the basis of a matching description of a canvas sent to Ferdinand in Vienna in December 1651. (Full article...)

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Did you know ...

Die Schutzbefohlenen, 2015

... that Katrin Lea Tag, named the 2020 Scenic Designer of the Year, created sets and costumes for Die Schutzbefohlenen (production pictured) at the Burgtheater, and for Barrie Kosky's Salome at Oper Frankfurt?
... that all three engines on Aeroflot Flight 6709 stopped at the same time, resulting in a deadly crash?
... that designs by nail artist Jenny Bui have become part of Cardi B's signature look?
... that the results of the 1870 Londonderry City by-election were cited as evidence of co-operation between Episcopalian and Presbyterian voters in Ulster?
... that the Division of Global Migration and Quarantine can legally detain a person entering the U.S. who may have one of nine quarantinable contagious diseases?
... that the concept of the multimedia franchise BanG Dream! involves bands composed of voice actresses who can play their own instruments?
... that Louis-Thomas Chabert de Joncaire convinced several Iroquois tribes to ally with the French against the English in 1711 through song?
... that Ernest Hemingway watched the television adaptation of For Whom the Bell Tolls from a flea-bitten motel as the screenwriter held the "rabbit ears" for him?

In the news

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

Corey Seager

At least 12 people are killed and 39 others are missing after Typhoon Molave hits the Philippines and Vietnam.
In baseball, the Los Angeles Dodgers defeat the Tampa Bay Rays to win the World Series (MVP Corey Seager pictured).
Wavel Ramkalawan becomes the first opposition candidate to be elected President of Seychelles since independence in 1976.
In Poland, protests break out following changes to abortion laws.

On this day

October 29: Mawlid (Sunni Islam, 2020); Republic Day in Turkey (1923)

Marmaray train

539 BC – Cyrus the Great captured Babylon, incorporating the Neo-Babylonian Empire and making the Achaemenid Empire the largest in the history of the world to that time.
1618 – English courtier and explorer Sir Walter Raleigh was executed in London after King James I reinstated a fifteen-year-old death sentence against him.
1948 – Arab–Israeli War: As the Israel Defense Forces captured the Palestinian Arab village of Safsaf, they massacred at least 52 villagers.
1960 – A C-46 airliner carrying the Cal Poly Mustangs football team crashed during takeoff from Toledo Express Airport in Ohio, U.S., resulting in 22 deaths.
2013 – The first phase of the Marmaray project (train pictured) opened with an undersea rail tunnel across the Bosphorus strait.

George Abbot (b. 1562)
Marie of Romania (b. 1875)
Frances Hodgson Burnett (d. 1924)

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Today's featured picture

Lord Ribblesdale is an oil-on-canvas portrait painted in 1902 by the American artist John Singer Sargent, depicting Thomas Lister, 4th Baron Ribblesdale. The painting portrays him in his hunting clothes as Master of the Queen's Buckhounds, and is said to epitomise the British aristocrat. The tall hat and the fluted pilaster of the wall behind, the clear silhouette of his long coat, and subtle changes that Sargent made to the sitter's physiognomy – such as an elongated nose, and the head disproportionately small in comparison to the body – emphasise Ribblesdale's thinness and height. The portrait is in the collection of the National Gallery in London.

Painting credit: John Singer Sargent

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