Wikipedia:Main Page history/2019 December 4

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From today's featured article

The Sloan–Parker House

The Sloan–Parker House is a late-18th-century stone residence near Junction, Hampshire County, in the U.S. state of West Virginia. It is located on the Northwestern Turnpike (US 50 and WV 28) in the rural Mill Creek valley. The original fieldstone section of the house was erected around 1790 for Richard Sloan and his wife Charlotte Van Horn Sloan. The Sloan family operated a successful weaving business from the house, and their Sloan counterpanes (quilts with block-designs) became well known in the region. In 1854 the family sold the house and 900 acres (360 ha) to the Parker family, who operated a stagecoach line on the Moorefield and North Branch Turnpike; the journey included a stop at the house, where the family served meals to travelers. During the Civil War, both Union and Confederate forces visited the house, and it was ransacked by Union troops for goods and supplies. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1975. (Full article...)

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Did you know ...

Rick Cluff

... that radio host Rick Cluff (pictured) accepted a position at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation despite his father's belief it was "full of left-wing communists" and that radio was "a dead-end career"?
... that the granulate ambrosia beetle is native to Asia but has spread as an invasive species to Africa, the Americas, Europe, and Oceania?
... that the brother of Ugandan president Idi Amin was once delivered in a car boot to military commander Hussein Mohammed?
... that Memory: The Origins of Alien defines the Alien franchise as "a collective art form" inspired by H. P. Lovecraft, Francis Bacon, and the Greek Furies?
... that Charles Blackwell was the third Blackwell (after his father and his grandfather) to be elected to the Institution of Civil Engineers?
... that jazz musicians Ben Tucker and Billy Taylor bought Savannah, Georgia, radio station WSOK and expanded its album collection from 20 to 4,000?
... that letters which Charlotte Pistorius, the self-taught wife of a country pastor, wrote to intellectuals Friedrich Schleiermacher and Ernst Moritz Arndt were published with their works?
... that there is a man in tweeds on a gallows outside the Green Man, Ashbourne?

In the news

Adil Abdul-Mahdi

The Power of Siberia pipeline begins operations, delivering Russian natural gas to China.
In Iraq, Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi (pictured) resigns amidst ongoing protests.
Luis Lacalle Pou of the National Party is elected President of Uruguay.
An earthquake in northwestern Albania kills at least 50 people and injures more than 900 others.

On this day

December 4: Navy Day in India

Mary Celeste, 1861

1829 – Sati, the Hindu funeral custom of a widow's self-immolation on her husband's pyre, was prohibited in parts of British India after years of campaigning by Ram Mohan Roy.
1872 – The American brigantine Mary Celeste (painting shown) was found apparently abandoned under circumstances that remain unknown.
1949 – Duncan Stewart, the British governor of Sarawak, was fatally stabbed in Sibu during his first visit to the colony.
1980 – The English rock group Led Zeppelin officially disbanded.
2006 – Six black teenagers assaulted a white student in Jena, Louisiana; the subsequent court cases became a cause célèbre for perceived racial injustice in the U.S.

John Leamy (d. 1839) · I. K. Gujral (b. 1919) · Hannah Arendt (d. 1975)

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Today's featured picture

The Creaking Pagoda or Chinese Summer-House is located in Tsarskoye Selo, outside Saint Petersburg, Russia, between two ponds on the boundary separating the Catherine Park of the Baroque Catherine Palace and the New Garden of the neoclassical Alexander Palace's Alexander Park. The pagoda, designed by Georg von Veldten, is a folly that resulted from the 18th-century taste for chinoiserie. The walls are decorated with figures of dragons and other stylized Chinese motifs. Construction lasted from 1778 to 1786, and the structure was restored from 1954 to 1956. The name of the structure refers to a characteristic sound produced by a metal weathervane, shaped like a banner, on the top of the structure, which creaks when it is turned by the wind.

Photograph credit: Andrew Shiva

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