Wikipedia:Today's featured article/November 2024

Today's featured article archive

November 1

BAE Systems has offices in the Farnborough Aerospace Centre business park.

BAE Systems is a British multinational aerospace, defence and information security company, based in London, England. It is the largest defence contractor in Europe and the seventh-largest in the world. Its largest operations are in the United Kingdom and in the United States, where it is one of the six largest suppliers to the US Department of Defense. Other major markets include Saudi Arabia, Australia, Canada, Japan, India and Turkey. The company was formed in 1999 by the merger of Marconi Electronic Systems with the defence arm of the General Electric Company and British Aerospace. BAE has made a number of acquisitions, most notably of United Defense and Armor Holdings and has sold its shares in Airbus. It is involved in several major defence projects, including the Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II, the Eurofighter Typhoon, and the Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carriers. (Full article...)

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November 2

Balfour castle on Shapinsay

Shapinsay is one of the Orkney Islands off the north coast of mainland Scotland. At 29.5 square kilometres (11.4 sq mi), it is the eighth largest island in the Orkney archipelago. The land is low-lying and fertile, with a bedrock formed from Old Red Sandstone overlain by boulder clay. Shapinsay has two nature reserves and is notable for its bird life. Balfour Castle (pictured) is one of the island's prominent features and a reminder of the Balfour family's domination of Shapinsay during the 18th and 19th centuries. Other landmarks include a standing stone, an Iron Age broch, a souterrain and a salt-water shower. There is one village on the island, Balfour, from which car ferries sail to the Orkney Mainland. At the 2011 census, Shapinsay had a population of 307. The island's economy is based on agriculture, with a few small businesses that are tourism-related. A community-owned wind turbine was constructed in 2011. Shapinsay's long history has given rise to various folk tales. (Full article...)

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November 3

Logo of Blue Note Records

The album covers of Blue Note Records, an American jazz record label, have been recognized for their distinctive designs, which often feature bold colors, experimental typography, and candid photographs of the album's musicians, and are described as belonging to the Bauhaus and Swiss Style movements. In the early 1950s, artists like Gil Mellé, Paul Bacon, and John Hermansader designed Blue Note's earliest album covers. In 1956, Reid Miles was hired as Blue Note's art director, creating 400 to 500 covers with a unique style incorporating diverse typefaces and design principles such as asymmetry and tinting. After Miles left in 1967, artists like Mati Klarwein and Bob Venosa took over. Designers such as Norman Seeff and Bob Cato contributed in the 1970s, while Japanese artists created new covers for reissues in the late 1970s and 1980s. From the mid-1980s onward, artists like Paula Scher and Adam Pendleton have designed covers, with Miles' work in particular remaining highly influential. (Full article...)

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November 4

Ljubljana's sister ship Beograd (right)

Ljubljana was the third and last Beograd-class destroyer built for the Royal Yugoslav Navy in the late 1930s. She was designed to operate as part of a division led by the flotilla leader Dubrovnik. Ljubljana entered service in November 1939, was armed with a main battery of four Škoda 120 mm (4.7 in) guns in single mounts, and had a top speed of 35 knots (65 km/h; 40 mph). In 1940, Ljubljana ran aground on a reef off the Yugoslav port of Šibenik, where, badly damaged, she was taken for repairs. Yugoslavia entered World War II when the German-led Axis powers invaded in April 1941, and Ljubljana—still under repair—was captured by the Royal Italian Navy. After repairs were completed, she saw active service in the Royal Italian Navy under the name Lubiana, mainly as a convoy escort on routes between Italy and North Africa. She was lost on 1 April 1943, when she ran aground and was abandoned off the Tunisian coast after a navigational error. (This article is part of a featured topic: Ships of the Royal Yugoslav Navy.)

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November 5

A section of the trail in Shawangunk, New York.

The Walden–Wallkill Rail Trail, also known as the Jesse McHugh Rail Trail, is a 3.22-mile (5.18 km) rail trail between the village of Walden, New York and the hamlet of Wallkill. The two communities are located in Orange and Ulster counties, respectively, in upstate New York. The trail is part of the former Wallkill Valley Railroad's rail corridor. The railway was the first to operate in Ulster County. Passenger service ended in 1937; the opening of the New York State Thruway and decreased freight traffic caused the line to close in 1957. The land was purchased by the towns of Montgomery and Shawangunk in 1985 and converted to a public trail. The portion of the trail in Shawangunk was formally opened in 1993 and named after former town supervisor Jesse McHugh. After seven years of discussion, the route was paved between 2008 and 2009. The trail includes an unofficial, unimproved section to the north of Wallkill, and is bounded by NY 52 and NY 208. (Full article...)

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November 6

Jackson c. 1903

Benjamin Jackson (January 2, 1835 – August 20, 1915) was a Canadian sailor and farmer. Raised in a small community of Black Nova Scotians, Jackson served for one year in the Union Navy during the American Civil War. Deployed in the Union blockade of the Confederate coastline, he also participated in the Battle of Mobile Bay as a gun captain. He disarmed multiple naval mines and once picked up a live grenade and threw it from the deck of his ship, an act that earned him a medal. After the war, Jackson lived the rest of his life in Lockhartville, Nova Scotia, sailing commercially until 1875 and farming for many years longer. His funeral in 1915 was described as "the largest seen in Lockhartville for many years", though his grave remained unmarked until 2010. One of the eight history markers on the Mathieu Da Costa African Heritage Trail is dedicated to his story and Ben Jackson Road in Hantsport, Nova Scotia, is named in his honour. (Full article...)

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November 7

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George Floyd Jr. (born December 21, 1960) is an American former professional football player who was a defensive back for two seasons with the New York Jets in the National Football League. Floyd played college football for the Eastern Kentucky University Colonels, where he won the 1979 National Collegiate Athletic Association Division I-AA football championship and set several school records, including for most career interceptions (22), and most career interception return yards (328). Floyd appeared in ten games during the 1982 New York Jets season, including three playoff games. He missed the entire 1983 season and appeared in eight games during the 1984 season before retiring after his third knee injury. He was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 1999. After the murder of a man with the same name in June 2020, his photograph was erroneously included in a montage at the other Floyd's funeral. As of 2023^[update], he is a defensive backs coach for Conner High School in Kentucky. (Full article...)

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November 8

Costello's on the corner of Third Avenue and East 44th Street, under the shadow of the Third Avenue El, c. 1939–1941

Costello's (also known as Tim's) was a bar and restaurant in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, from 1929 to 1992. The bar operated at several locations near the intersection of East 44th Street and Third Avenue. Costello's was known as a drinking spot for journalists with the New York Daily News, writers with The New Yorker, novelists, and cartoonists, including the author Ernest Hemingway, the cartoonist James Thurber, the journalist John McNulty, the poet Brendan Behan, the short-story writer John O'Hara, and the writers Maeve Brennan and A. J. Liebling. The bar is also known for having been home to a wall where Thurber drew a cartoon depiction of the "Battle of the Sexes" at some point between 1934 and 1935; the cartoon was destroyed, illustrated again, and then lost in the 1990s. A wall illustrated in 1976 by several cartoonists, including Bill Gallo, Stan Lee, Mort Walker, Al Jaffee, Sergio Aragonés, and Dik Browne, is still on display at the bar's final location. (Full article...)

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November 9

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The Kwinana Freeway is a 72-kilometre (45 mi) freeway in and beyond the southern suburbs of Perth, Western Australia, linking central Perth with Mandurah to the south. It is the central section of State Route 2, which continues north as Mitchell Freeway to Clarkson, and south as Forrest Highway towards Bunbury. A 4-kilometre (2.5 mi) section between Canning and Leach highways is also part of National Route 1. Along its route are interchanges with several major roads, including Roe Highway and Mandjoogoordap Drive. The northern terminus of the Kwinana Freeway is at the Narrows Bridge, which crosses the Swan River, and the southern terminus is at Pinjarra Road, east of Mandurah. Planning for the Kwinana Freeway began in the 1950s, and the first segment in South Perth was constructed between 1956 and 1959. The route has been progressively widened and extended south since then. During the 1980s, the freeway was extended to South Street in Murdoch, and in June 2001, it reached Safety Bay Road in Baldivis. The final extension began as the New Perth Bunbury Highway project, constructed between December 2006 and September 2009. In early 2009, the section north of Pinjarra Road was named as part of the Kwinana Freeway, with the remainder named Forrest Highway. The freeway has been adapted to cater for public transport, with the introduction of bus priority measures in 1987, and the 2007 opening of the Mandurah railway line, constructed in the freeway median strip. (Full article...)

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November 10

Santa Cruz entering the field before a game in Belém

The Suicidal Tour took place when Brazilian professional football club Santa Cruz Futebol Clube toured the North Region of Brazil from 2 January 1943 to 29 April 1943. Over almost four months, they played either 26 or 28 friendly matches in six cities. The tour gained its name due to the misfortunes endured by the club. Looking to recover from a financial crisis, Santa Cruz arranged five matches in Belém, Pará. Traveling up the Amazon River for another round of matches, they first started experiencing problems in Manaus, where two players left to play for other clubs and seven members of the team's delegation caught dysentery. Two players went on to catch typhoid fever and died. Unable to return home through the sea, and needing to cover growing costs, Santa Cruz had to return to Recife by land, playing matches along the way to earn money. The return had further problems, including a fake arrest warrant for a player, a trip alongside thieves, and two train derailments. (Full article...)

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November 11

de Ros's coat of arms

William de Ros, 6th Baron Ros (c. 1370 – 1 November 1414) was an English nobleman, politician and soldier. He inherited his father's barony and estates (with extensive lands centred on Lincolnshire) in 1394 and married Margaret, daughter of Baron Fitzalan, shortly afterwards. Her family, like that of de Ros, was well-connected, and they were implacably opposed to King Richard II. In 1399 Richard confiscated the estates of his cousin, Henry Bolingbroke, Duke of Lancaster, and exiled him. When Henry invaded England several months later, de Ros took his side almost immediately. After Henry declared himself King Henry IV, de Ros voted in the House of Lords for the former king's imprisonment. He became an important aide and counsellor to King Henry, and regularly spoke for him in parliament. He also supported Henry in his military campaigns, participating in the invasion of Scotland in 1400 and assisting in the suppression of Richard le Scrope's rebellion five years later. (Full article...)

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November 12

Daniel Boone (November 2, 1734 – September 26, 1820) was an American pioneer and frontiersman. In 1775, Boone blazed the Wilderness Road through the Cumberland Gap into Kentucky, despite resistance from Native Americans; by the end of the 18th century, more than 200,000 people entered Kentucky by following the route marked by Boone. He was adopted into the Shawnee tribe in 1778 but resigned after they killed his son. In April 1781 Boone was elected to the Virginia General Assembly. An account of his adventures was published in 1784, making him famous in America and Europe. After the Revolutionary War, he worked as a surveyor and merchant but went into debt as a Kentucky land speculator. He resettled in Missouri in 1799, where he spent most of his remaining life. After his death, he was the subject of works of fiction; his adventures helped create the archetypal frontier hero of American folklore. (Full article...)

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November 13

Exit 2 of Marina Bay station

Marina Bay MRT station is a Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) interchange station on the North South (NSL), Circle (CCL) and Thomson–East Coast (TEL) lines in Singapore. Located in the Downtown Core district near Marina Bay, it serves the Marina One Residences, Marina Bay Suites and the Marina Bay Financial Centre. It was one of the last stations to be completed in the early phases of the MRT network, opening on 4 November 1989. The station was the terminus of the NSL until the line's extension in 2014. It became an interchange station with the CCL when the two-station branch extension from Promenade station was completed in January 2012. The TEL station platforms were completed in November 2022, becoming a triple-line interchange on the MRT network. The station features art as part of the MRT network's Art-in-Transit programme. The sculpture Flowers in Blossom II is over the CCL mezzanine. The CCL platforms feature photographs by Nah Yong En and the TEL station features murals by Tang Ling Nah. (Full article...)

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November 14

Sample ballot from Lake County

The U.S. state of Illinois held an election on November 3, 1964, for all 177 members of the state's House of Representatives for the 74th Illinois General Assembly, alongside other state and federal elections. Due to the state's failure to redistrict, all of the seats were elected at-large, with voters choosing up to 177 candidates to support. Each party was only allowed to nominate 118 candidates. All 118 Democratic candidates won, flipping control of the chamber to Democrats with a two-thirds supermajority. (Full article...)

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November 15

Thomas Percy

Thomas Percy was a member of the failed Gunpowder Plot. Following King James's accession to the English throne in 1603, Percy became disenchanted with the new king, who he supposed had reneged on his promises of toleration for English Catholics. He joined Robert Catesby's conspiracy to kill the king and his ministers by blowing up the House of Lords with gunpowder. Percy helped fund the group and secured the leases to properties in London, including the undercroft beneath the House of Lords where the gunpowder was placed. When the plot was exposed on 5 November 1605, Percy fled to the Midlands, catching up with other conspirators travelling to Dunchurch. At the border of Staffordshire they were besieged by the Sheriff of Worcester and his men. Percy was reportedly killed by the same musketball as Catesby and was buried nearby. His body was later exhumed, and his head exhibited outside Parliament. (This article is part of a featured topic: Gunpowder Plot.)

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November 16

Chris Hemsworth at the 2024 San Diego Comic-Con

Thor: The Dark World is a 2013 American superhero film based on the Marvel Comics character Thor, produced by Marvel Studios and distributed by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures. It is the sequel to Thor (2011) and the eighth film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). The film was directed by Alan Taylor from a screenplay by Christopher Yost and the writing team of Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely. It stars Chris Hemsworth as Thor alongside Natalie Portman, Tom Hiddleston, Stellan Skarsgård, Idris Elba, Christopher Eccleston, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Kat Dennings, Ray Stevenson, Zachary Levi, Tadanobu Asano, Jaimie Alexander, Rene Russo, and Anthony Hopkins. In the film, Thor and Loki (Hiddleston) team up to save the Nine Realms from the Dark Elves. (Full article...)

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November 17

Mario Party DS is a 2007 party video game developed by Hudson Soft and published by Nintendo for the Nintendo DS. It is the second handheld game in the Mario Party series, as well as the last game in the series to be developed by Hudson Soft, as all subsequent titles have been developed by NDcube. Like most installments in the Mario Party series, Mario Party DS features characters of the Mario franchise competing in a board game with a variety of minigames, many of which utilize the console's unique features, including its built-in microphone, dual screen and touch screen mechanics, and motion sensitivity. Up to four human players can compete at a time, though characters can also be computer-controlled. Although Mario Party DS received mixed reviews, with general praise for its minigame variety and criticism for its absence of an online multiplayer mode, the game has sold more than nine million units worldwide, making it the 11th best-selling game for the Nintendo DS. (Full article...)

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November 18

Donkey Kong Country is a 1994 platform game developed by Rare and published by Nintendo for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. It follows the gorilla Donkey Kong and his nephew Diddy Kong as they set out to recover their stolen banana hoard from the crocodile King K. Rool and his army, the Kremlings. Nintendo commissioned Rare to revive the dormant Donkey Kong franchise as it sought a game to compete with Sega's Aladdin (1993). Donkey Kong Country was one of the first home console games to feature pre-rendered graphics, achieved through a compression technique that converted 3D models into sprites with little loss of detail. It was released on 18 November 1994 to acclaim. Critics hailed its visuals as groundbreaking and praised its gameplay and music; it is frequently listed as one of the greatest games of all time. Donkey Kong Country re-established Donkey Kong as a popular Nintendo franchise and was followed by sequels and ports for subsequent Nintendo consoles. (Full article...)

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November 19

Gravestone of Justus

Justus, sometimes referred to as Iustus, was the fourth Archbishop of Canterbury. Pope Gregory the Great sent Justus to England on a mission to Christianize the Anglo-Saxons, probably arriving with the second group of missionaries despatched in 601. Justus became the first Bishop of Rochester in 604 and signed a letter to the Irish bishops urging them to adopt the Roman method of calculating the date of Easter. He also attended a church council in Paris in 614. Following King Æthelberht of Kent's death in 616, Justus was forced to flee to Gaul but was reinstated in his diocese the following year. In 624, Justus became Archbishop of Canterbury, overseeing the despatch of missionaries to Northumbria. He died on 10 November, probably sometime between 627 and 631. After his death, he was revered as a saint and had a shrine in St Augustine's Abbey, Canterbury, where his remains were translated to in the 1090s (gravestone pictured). (This article is part of a featured topic: Members of the Gregorian mission.)

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November 20

Harrison Ford in 2017

Blade Runner is a 1982 science fiction film directed by Ridley Scott from a screenplay by Hampton Fancher and David Peoples. Starring Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, Sean Young, and Edward James Olmos, it is an adaptation of Philip K. Dick's 1968 novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? The film is set in a dystopian future Los Angeles of 2019, in which synthetic humans known as replicants are bio-engineered by the powerful Tyrell Corporation to work on space colonies. When a fugitive group of advanced replicants led by Roy Batty (Hauer) escapes back to Earth, burnt-out cop Rick Deckard (Ford) reluctantly agrees to hunt them down. (Full article...)

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November 21