Wikipedia:Main Page history/2017 April 16

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From today's featured article

Political cartoon depicting Kalākaua
auctioning off the Hawaiian Islands

King Kalākaua's world tour in 1881 made him the first monarch to circumnavigate the globe. His agenda was to negotiate contract labor for the Kingdom of Hawaii's sugar plantations, with hopes of saving the dwindling Native Hawaiian population by drawing immigration from Asia-Pacific nations. Rumors circulated that the King secretly intended to use the trip to sell the Hawaiian Islands to the highest bidder. He visited American legislators and had an audience with the Pope in Rome. He also met with European and Asian heads of state, and was influenced by their ornate ceremonies and displays of military power. In between negotiations, Kalākaua and his companions visited tourist sites and attended local Freemasonry lodge meetings. As a result of his visit with Thomas Edison on the return trip through New York, Iolani Palace later became the first building in Hawaii with electric lighting. Kalākaua's amiable personality generated goodwill around the world, and he succeeded in increasing Hawaii's labor force. The Japanese workers he attracted were commemorated a century later with a new statue of Kalākaua in Waikiki. (Full article...)

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Did you know...

Rimatara lorikeet

... that Queen Tamaeva V saved the Rimatara lorikeet (pictured) from extinction through a royal taboo that forbade her people from harming or exporting the birds?
... that the 20th-century Easter hymn "Ye Watchers and Ye Holy Ones" takes its melody from "Lasst uns erfreuen" (Let us rejoice), a tune published in 1623 by a German activist against witch-hunts?
... that a career-threatening knee injury to Tasmanian Roar cricketer Erin Burns was successfully treated with stem cell injections by the Sydney Swans' club doctor, Nathan Gibbs?
... that the tongue of the golden-belted bumble bee is about two-thirds as long as its body?
... that passenger service on the Staten Island Railway's North Shore Branch was discontinued 16 years after it was rebuilt?
... that Ursula Zollenkopf, a contralto of the NWDR Chor, performed solo and choral parts in a posthumous Schoenberg opera premiere and in an Easter cantata by Bach?
... that Chocorua Island Chapel at Squam Lake, New Hampshire, part of the first summer youth camp in America, was built by the camp's boys with an erratic boulder, trees, and beach sand?
... that Juan Tepano was proclaimed "king" of Easter Island by officers of the Chilean Navy, but no one – including Tepano – took the ceremony seriously?

In the news

Sergio García

Pakistan sentences former Indian naval officer Kulbhushan Jadhav to death for espionage and sabotage.
In golf, Sergio García (pictured) defeats Justin Rose in a playoff to win the Masters Tournament.
At least 44 people are killed and 126 others injured when two Egyptian Coptic Orthodox churches are attacked on Palm Sunday by suicide bombers.
The Basque separatist militant group ETA disarms itself.
A stolen truck is driven through crowds and into a department store in downtown Stockholm, killing 4 people and injuring 15 others.

On this day...

April 16

Bernard Baruch

1520 – Citizens of Toledo, Castile, who were opposed to the rule of the foreign-born Charles V, rose up in revolt when the royal government attempted to unseat radical city councilors.
1847 – New Zealand Wars: A minor Māori chief was accidentally shot by a junior British Army officer in the Petre settlement of New Zealand's North Island, triggering the Wanganui Campaign.
1917 – World War I: A massive assault by several French army corps against the German-occupied Chemin des Dames ridge began south of Laon, France.
1947 – American financier and presidential adviser Bernard Baruch (pictured) first described the post–World War II tensions between the Soviet Union and the United States as a "cold war".
2007 – In one of the deadliest shooting incidents in United States history, a gunman killed 32 people and wounded over 20 more before committing suicide at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg, Virginia.

Tabinshwehti (b. 1516) · Francisco Goya (d. 1828) · John Millington Synge (b. 1871)

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Today's featured picture

Todi is a town and comune (municipality) of the province of Perugia in central Italy. Perched on a tall two-crested hill overlooking the east bank of the river Tiber, it had a population of more than 17,000 in 2007.

Photograph: Livioandronico2013

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