Wikipedia:Main Page history/2017 April 29

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From today's featured article

Little Nemo (1911) is a silent animated short film, the first by American cartoonist Winsor McCay. One of the earliest animated films, it features characters from his comic strip Little Nemo in Slumberland. The film's expressive character animation distinguished it from the earlier experiments of animators such as James Stuart Blackton and Émile Cohl. McCay, inspired by flip books his son brought home, came to see the potential of the animated film medium. The short's four thousand drawings on rice paper were shot at Vitagraph Studios under Blackton's supervision. Most of the film is a live-action sequence in which McCay bets his colleagues that he can make drawings that move. He wins the bet with four minutes of animation in which the characters perform, interact, and metamorphose to McCay's whim. After the film debuted, he began using it in his vaudeville act. The film's enthusiastic reception motivated him to hand-color each of the animated frames of the originally black-and-white film. Its success led him to create more animated films, including How a Mosquito Operates in 1912, and his best-known film, Gertie the Dinosaur, in 1914. (Full article...)

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Did you know...

Altenberger Dom

... that the Altenberger Dom (pictured) was restored with support from a Prussian king who decreed that Catholics and Protestants had to use it simultaneously?
... that Britain's first motorway, the Preston By-pass, had to close within weeks of opening due to frost damage?
... that Lewis Ludington founded the city of Columbus, Wisconsin, but never resided in the state?
... that Puzzled was one of twenty games that came with the 2012 Neo Geo X console?
... that after the Duluth lynchings, the African-American suffragist Nellie Griswold Francis initiated, drafted, and lobbied for a state anti-lynching bill that was signed into law in 1921?
... that the trap jaw ant Odontomachus assiniensis stings larger prey but kills smaller prey with a snap of its jaws?
... that Loma Linda Foods and Worthington Foods were the largest manufacturers of soy-based foods in the U.S. in the 1960s?
... that the artist Myles Murphy was seriously injured while painting himself in a wedding dress?

In the news

Mary Keitany and Daniel Wanjiru

China launches its first domestically built aircraft carrier.
In the London Marathon, Mary Keitany and Daniel Wanjiru (pictured) win the women's and men's races, respectively.
A Taliban attack on an Afghan National Army base kills 140 soldiers.
Turkey votes in a constitutional referendum in favour of replacing its parliamentary system of government with an executive presidency.
A suicide bombing of civilian evacuation buses near Aleppo, Syria, kills more than 120 people, including at least 80 children.

On this day...

April 29

1991 Bangladesh cyclone

1862 – American Civil War: Union forces under David Farragut captured New Orleans, securing access into the Mississippi River.
1944 – Second World War: British agent Nancy Wake parachuted into Auvergne, becoming a liaison between the Special Operations Executive and the local Maquis group
1975 – Vietnam War: North Vietnam concluded its East Sea Campaign by capturing all of the Spratly Islands that were being held by South Vietnam.
1991 – A powerful tropical cyclone (pictured) struck Chittagong, Bangladesh, killing at least 138,000 people and leaving as many as 10 million homeless across the region.
1997 – The 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention went into effect, outlawing the production, stockpiling and use of chemical weapons in those countries that ratified the arms control agreement.

George Farquhar (d. 1707) · Harold Urey (b. 1893) · Ludwig Wittgenstein (d. 1951)

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Today's featured picture

The Threatened Swan is an oil painting made around 1650 by Dutch Golden Age painter Jan Asselijn. Depicting a life-size swan defending its nest, it has been interpreted as an allegory of grand pensionary Johan de Witt protecting the Netherlands from its enemies. The work is in the collection of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam in the Netherlands.

Painting: Jan Asselijn

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