Wikipedia:Main Page history/2024 December 2

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Ichiko Aoba
Ichiko Aoba

Windswept Adan is the seventh studio album by Japanese singer-songwriter Ichiko Aoba (pictured), released on 2 December 2020 by her label, Hermine. The concept album follows the story of a young girl who is sent away by her family to the fictional island of Adan. Aoba and composer Taro Umebayashi wrote, composed, arranged, and produced the music for the album, which was preceded by one single, "Porcelain". Windswept Adan is a chamber folk and psychedelic folk album with elements of jazz, classical, and ambient music. Marking a departure from Aoba's earlier minimalist instrumentation, it includes a celesta, wind chimes, string arrangements, and vocal performances. The album received widespread critical acclaim for its arrangements, instrumentation, and worldbuilding. Upon its release, the album debuted at number 82 on the Billboard Japan Hot Albums chart and number 88 on the Oricon Albums Chart. Aoba supported the album with her first international tour between August and October 2022. (Full article...)

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Zooming In on the Andromeda Galaxy
Zooming In on the Andromeda Galaxy
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December 2

Benazir Bhutto
Benazir Bhutto
More anniversaries:

Between the 1890s and 1940s, the Imperial Japanese Navy built a series of battleships as it expanded its fleet. Previously, the Empire of Japan had acquired a few ironclad warships from foreign builders, although it had adopted the Jeune École naval doctrine which emphasized cheap torpedo boats and commerce raiding to offset expensive, heavily armored ships. Combat experience in the First Sino-Japanese War of 1894–1895 convinced the Imperial Japanese Navy that its doctrine was untenable, leading to a ten-year naval construction program that called for a total of six battleships and six armored cruisers (the Six-Six Fleet). To counter reinforcement of the Russian Empire's Pacific Squadron as tensions rose between the Russians and the Japanese over control of Korea and Manchuria in the early 1900s, Japan ordered the two battleships of the Katori class in 1903. (Full list...)

Orion in The Book of Fixed Stars

The Book of Fixed Stars (Arabic: كتاب صور الكواكب kitāb suwar al-kawākib, literally The Book of the Shapes of Stars) is an astronomical text written by Abd al-Rahman al-Sufi (Azophi) around 964. Following the Graeco-Arabic translation movement in the 9th century AD, the book was written in Arabic, the common language for scholars across the vast Islamic territories, although the author himself was Persian. It was an attempt to create a synthesis of the comprehensive star catalogue in Ptolemy's Almagest (books VII and VIII) with the indigenous Arabic astronomical traditions on the constellations (notably the Arabic constellation system of the Anwā'). The original manuscript no longer survives as an autograph, however, the Book of Stars has survived in later-made copies. This image from the book shows the constellation of Orion, in mirror image as if on a celestial globe, and is from a copy in the Bodleian Library dated to the 12th century AD.

Ilustration credit: Abd al-Rahman al-Sufi

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