User:Allard
Hello and a warm welcome to all my fellow Wikipedians. How nice of you to drop in to see who I am!
Morning>
Wikipedia & me:
[edit]How I discovered Wikipedia, I do not remember. But from being a reader I slowly became a contributor. Although I don't work that much on Wikipedia I do see myself as a Wikipedian. I don't go searching on Wikipedia what I can edit next, I edit what I find and want to do. This means I add and mainly improve a lot of small things and only rarely I make large edits.
My work:
[edit]Articles I've started on Wikipedia:
- Fort Knox Bullion Depository
- Animals are Beautiful People
- Template:David Attenborough Television Series
- Template:Malta Islands
Images I made for Wikipedia:
- Dutch lower house as from 2006
- New image of the Netherlands Air Force Roundel
- Map on membership of the League of Nations
- United Nations membership map
- Improved image of the British Helgoland flag
- New image showing the current flag of Hel(i)goland
Article guide:
[edit]A list of articles worth looking at, if one can find them:
- Antidisestablishmentarianism
- Ball's Pyramid
- British Isles (terminology)
- Eadweard Muybridge
- Gunpowder Plot
- Horace de Vere Cole
- Humphrey (cat)
- Islomania
- List of countries by date of nationhood
- List of flags
- List of people who died on their birthdays
- List of regnal numerals of future British monarchs
- List of unusual deaths
- Northwest Angle
- Quadripoint
- Racetrack Playa
- Rule of tincture
- San Gimignano
- Transcontinental country
- Undivided India & Partition of India
- Voyager Golden Record
- Web colors
- Winchester Mystery House
And there's always the Random article
And to all citizens of the European Union, please read this: Oneseat.eu
News
[edit]- Amid escalating tensions in the Middle East, Israel invades Lebanon, and Iran launches missiles (pictured) against Israel.
- Flooding in Nepal leaves more than 200 people dead, including 37 in the nation's capital, Kathmandu.
- In Australian rules football, the Brisbane Lions defeat the Sydney Swans to win the AFL Grand Final.
- Hurricane Helene leaves more than 100 people dead across the southeastern United States.
- British actress Maggie Smith dies at the age of 89.
Selected anniversaries
[edit]- 1392 – Muhammad VII became the twelfth sultan of the Emirate of Granada.
- 1602 – Anglo-Spanish War: An English fleet intercepted and attacked six Spanish ships at the Battle of the Narrow Seas (pictured).
- 1849 – American author Edgar Allan Poe was found semi-conscious and delirious in Baltimore under mysterious circumstances; it was the last time he was seen in public before his death four days later.
- 1952 – The United Kingdom successfully conducted its first nuclear test, becoming the world's third state with nuclear weapons.
- 1991 – Nadine Gordimer became the first South African to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.
- Ermengarde of Hesbaye (d. 818)
- Louise Lehzen (b. 1784)
- George Ripley (b. 1802)
- Fakih Usman (d. 1968)
Did you know...
[edit]- ... that after some of Anders Årfelt's lion sculptures (example pictured) were struck during the 2017 Stockholm truck attack, the city ordered new versions weighing 3 tonnes?
- ... that pastry chef and television judge Benoit Blin cut off the tips of his fingers in a kitchen accident during his service in the French Navy?
- ... that the Netflix-released film A House in Jerusalem is inspired by the history of the director's Palestinian family, who were expelled in 1948 from what had become Israel during the Nakba?
- ... that former Commonwealth Games diver Nicky Cooney became a police officer?
- ... that in 1917 British soldiers in France opened fire on mutineers from the Egyptian Labour Corps, killing at least 27 of them?
- ... that Maryvonne Le Dizès commissioned a trio for saxophone, trombone and violin during her time as a violinist with the Ensemble intercontemporain?
- ... that Patrick Tse's performance in the film Time won him the Hong Kong Film Award for Best Actor at the age of 85, making him the award's oldest recipient?
- ... that Elham Mahamid Ruzin, a blind Muslim Arab, won a silver medal for Israel at the 2024 Paris Paralympics?
- ... that attractions at the 1939 World's Fair included a roller coaster, a ski slope, and scantily clad women?
Today's featured article
[edit]The Secretum was a British Museum collection of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that held artefacts and images deemed sexually graphic. Many of the items were from pre-Christian traditions and the collection covered wide ranges of human history and geography. Many of the early artefacts with erotic or sexually graphic images acquired by the museum were not put on public display. Modern scholars believe this segregation was probably motivated by a paternalistic stance from the museum to keep what they considered morally dangerous material away from the public. By the 1860s there were around 700 such items held by the museum. In 1865 the antiquarian George Witt donated his phallocentric collection of 434 artefacts to the museum, which led to the formal setting up of the Secretum. Beginning in 1912 items were gradually transferred from the Secretum into departments appropriate for their time frame and culture. The last remaining items were moved out of the collection in 2005. (Full article...)