Wikipedia:Main Page history/2017 March 3

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From today's featured article

Ian O'Brien (born 3 March 1947) is a former breaststroke swimmer for Australia who won the 200 metre breaststroke at the 1964 Summer Olympics in Tokyo in world record time. In 1962 at the age of 15 he competed in his first national championships, winning the 220 yard breaststroke. At the 1962 British Empire and Commonwealth Games in Perth, Western Australia, he won both the 110 and 220 yd breaststroke and the 4 × 110 yd medley relay. He won both breaststroke events at the 1963 Australian Championships, repeating the feat for the next three years. After winning his gold medal at the Tokyo Olympics, he added a bronze in the medley relay. O'Brien successfully defended both his breaststroke titles at the 1966 British Empire and Commonwealth Games in Kingston, Jamaica. He won five Commonwealth Games gold medals and claimed a total of nine individual and six relay titles at the Australian Championships. He retired from the sport at the age of 21, worked for 10 years as a television stagehand, and later launched a company that produced television documentaries. In 1986 he was inducted into the Sport Australia Hall of Fame. (Full article...)

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Did you know...

Mary at Rocamadour

... that Francis Poulenc composed Litanies à la Vierge Noire, a French litany to the Black Virgin at Rocamadour (statue pictured), after a pilgrimage to the shrine?
... that Yale University architecture professor Louis Kahn said he would have given a failing grade to Uris Buildings Corporation's Three Penn Center?
... that the use of puns by Peter Adamson in his History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps series, has been both praised and criticized?
... that HMS Pearl escorted troops to Kip's Bay during the American Revolutionary War in September 1776?
... that actor Ryan Phillippe played Billy Douglas in his first professional acting role on the American soap opera One Life to Live, one of the first gay teenage characters in television?
... that Alexander the Great, King of Macedon, besieged the Illyrians at Pelion (in modern Albania) in 335 BC, a year before waging war against the Achaemenid Empire?
... that Printer's Devilry crossword puzzles were among Ximenes' most popular, even though they break Ximenes' rules of cryptic crossword setting?
... that economist Susan Dynarski, who advocates for simplifying the US Federal Student Aid application process, was the first member of her family to attend college?

In the news

The Leekfrith torcs

Scientists announce the discovery of microfossils within rocks dated between 3.77 and 4.28 billion years old from Northern Quebec, Canada, making them the oldest fossils of life on Earth.
The discovery of the Leekfrith torcs (pictured), believed to be the oldest Iron Age gold jewellery found in Britain, is announced.
Moonlight wins Best Picture and La La Land wins in six categories at the Academy Awards.
The Turkish-backed Free Syrian Army captures Al-Bab from ISIL.
Astronomers announce that the star TRAPPIST-1 hosts seven exoplanets, some orbiting in its habitable zone.

On this day...

March 3: Liberation Day in Bulgaria (1878)

Program for the woman suffrage parade

1861 – The Emancipation Manifesto of Tsar Alexander II was proclaimed, abolishing serfdom in Imperial Russia.
1875 – The first indoor game of ice hockey was played at the Victoria Skating Rink in Montreal by James Creighton and McGill University students.
1913 – Thousands of women marched in Washington, D.C. (program pictured) "in a spirit of protest" against the exclusion of women from American society.
1943 – Second World War: During a German aerial attack on London, 173 people were killed in a stampede while trying to enter Bethnal Green tube station, which was being used as an air-raid shelter.
1972 – Jethro Tull released Thick as a Brick, a concept album supposedly written by an 8-year-old boy, Gerald Bostock.

Robert Hooke (d. 1703) · Hergé (d. 1983)

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From today's featured list

Maya Angelou

The works of Maya Angelou encompass autobiography, plays, poetry, and teleplays. She also had an active directing, acting, and speaking career. She is best known for her books, including her series of seven autobiographies, starting with the critically acclaimed I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969). Angelou's autobiographies are distinct in style and narration, and "stretch over time and place", from Arkansas to Africa and back to the US. They take place from the beginnings of World War II to the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Angelou wrote collections of essays, including Wouldn't Take Nothing for My Journey Now (1993) and Even the Stars Look Lonesome (1997), which writer Hilton Als called her "wisdom books" and "homilies strung together with autobiographical texts". Angelou's successful acting career included roles in numerous plays, films, and television programs, such as in the television mini-series Roots in 1977. Her screenplay Georgia, Georgia (1972) was the first original script by a black woman to be produced. (Full list...)

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Today's featured picture

A gloriette is a building in a garden erected on a site that is elevated with respect to its surroundings. The structural execution and shape can vary greatly, often in the form of a pavilion or tempietto, more or less open on the sides. Shown here is the gloriette of Schönbrunn Palace in Vienna, Austria.

Photograph: Thomas Wolf

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