Wikipedia:Main Page history/2020 April 14

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From today's featured article

Canadian soldiers in Friesoythe
with a captured Hitler Youth flag

The Razing of Friesoythe took place on 14 April 1945 towards the end of World War II. The 4th Canadian (Armoured) Division, advancing into north-west Germany, attacked the German-held town of Friesoythe. The Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders of Canada captured the town. During the fighting the battalion's commander was killed by a German soldier, but it was reported that he had been killed by a civilian. The division's commander, Major-General Christopher Vokes, ordered that the town be razed in retaliation, and it was substantially destroyed. Twenty German civilians died in Friesoythe during the fighting. The rubble of the town was used to fill craters in local roads to make them passable for the division's tanks and heavy vehicles. Little official notice was taken of the incident and the Canadian Army official history glosses over it. Forty years later, Vokes wrote in his autobiography that he had "no great remorse over the elimination of Friesoythe". (Full article...)

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At least thirty people are killed in a tornado outbreak (satellite image shown) in the Southeastern United States.
The High Court of Australia quashes the conviction of Cardinal George Pell for child sex abuse and orders his acquittal.
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On this day

April 14: Bengali New Year, Tamil New Year, and other New Year festivals in South and Southeast Asia (2020); Day of the Georgian Language (1978); N'Ko Alphabet Day in West Africa (1949)

"Black Sunday" dust storm

43 BC – Mark Antony's forces initially had the upper hand in the Battle of Forum Gallorum, but were forced to retreat by a counter-attack by Roman Republican legions.
966 – Mieszko I, ruler of the Polans, converted to Christianity, an event considered to be the founding of the Polish state.
1935 – Dust Bowl: A severe dust storm (pictured) swept across Oklahoma and northern Texas, removing an estimated 300 million tons of topsoil from the prairies.
2010 – Nearly 2,700 people were killed in an earthquake registering 6.9 M_w in Yushu Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, China.

Harriett Ellen Grannis Arey (b. 1819)
V. Gordon Childe (b. 1892)
M. Visvesvaraya (d. 1962)

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Today's featured picture

The assassination of Abraham Lincoln on April 14, 1865, was part of a larger conspiracy by John Wilkes Booth intended to revive the Confederate cause by eliminating the three most important officials of the United States government. Booth was a well known stage actor, and shot President Lincoln once in the back of the head while the president was watching the play Our American Cousin at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C. Also present in the box, as guests of the president and First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln, were Major Henry Rathbone and his fiancée Clara Harris.

This picture is a 4-by-3-inch (102 mm × 76 mm) glass-slide illustration of Lincoln's assassination, designed for projection in a magic lantern and dating from around 1900. From left to right, the figures depicted are Booth, President Lincoln, Mary Lincoln, Harris and Rathbone.

Illustration credit: unknown, after T. M. McAllister; restored by Adam Cuerden

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