Wikipedia:Main Page history/2020 February 14

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From today's featured article

Alice Cooper

Love It to Death is the third studio album by the American rock band Alice Cooper (pictured), released in March 1971. The band took the name Alice Cooper in 1968 and became known for its outrageous theatrical live shows, but its first two albums failed to find an audience. In 1970 the band's single "I'm Eighteen" achieved top-forty success, peaking at No. 21 in the US and No. 7 in Canada. This convinced Warner Bros. that Alice Cooper had the commercial potential to release an album. Love It to Death reached No. 35 on the Billboard 200 albums chart and has since been certified platinum. In addition to "I'm Eighteen", a second track from the album, "Caught in a Dream", was released as a single and charted at No. 94 in the US. The album is seen as a foundational influence on hard rock, punk, and heavy metal. Several tracks have become live Alice Cooper standards and are frequently covered by other bands. (Full article...)

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Did you know ...

East face of St Leonard's Tower

... that William III's first proclamation in England was made near the site of St Leonard's Tower (pictured) in Newton Abbot?
... that Teno Roncalio, the last Democratic representative from Wyoming, had land claims along the Snake River worth an estimated US$7 billion in gold?
... that from 1938, the Slovak People's Party denounced Czechs as "enemies and pests" of the nation?
... that neuroscientist Kate Jeffery correctly predicted that her postdoctoral advisor John O'Keefe would win a Nobel Prize in 2014?
... that American military personnel taken prisoner of war have a duty to escape?
... that Nintendo planned to support Animal Crossing Plaza for only a limited period, and discontinued the application after less than 17 months?
... that Thomas Jefferson Vance Owen, the first school commissioner of Cook County, Illinois, and Chicago's first town president, was responsible for indirectly naming Grand Avenue?
... that after the closure of Tranvía Villasegura, Tenerife's first tram system, in the 1950s, one of the trams was reused as a bar?

In the news

Bong Joon-ho

The Irish general election concludes with no party holding a majority of seats in Dáil Éireann.
South Korean film Parasite wins four Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director for Bong Joon-ho (pictured).
A mass shooting in Korat, Thailand, leaves 30 people dead and more than 50 others injured.
Two avalanches near the Turkish town of Bahçesaray kill at least 41 people.

On this day

February 14: Valentine's Day; Fatimah's Birthday / Mother's Day in Iran (2020)

Pale Blue Dot

1779 – American Revolutionary War: A militia of Patriots decisively defeated and scattered a Loyalist militia that was on its way to British-controlled Augusta, Georgia.
1852 – The Hospital for Sick Children, the first hospital in England to provide in-patient beds specifically for children, was founded in London.
1914 – The animated film Gertie the Dinosaur was released, later greatly influencing future animators such as the Fleischer brothers and Walt Disney.
1990 – NASA's Voyager 1 space probe took the iconic Pale Blue Dot photograph (pictured) of Earth at a record distance of 40.5 au (6.06 billion km; 3.76 billion mi).
2011 – Arab Spring: A "Day of Rage" marked the beginning of the Bahraini uprising.

Valentin Friedland (b. 1490) · Eleanora Atherton (b. 1782) · Franjo Mihalić (d. 2015)

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From today's featured list

Damian Kulash

The YouTube Awards was a promotion run by the website YouTube to recognize the best user-generated videos of the year. The awards were presented twice, in 2007 and 2008, with winners being voted for by the site's users from shortlists compiled by YouTube staff. YouTube was launched on February 14, 2005, and quickly began to grow – by July 2006, traffic to the site had increased by 297 percent. As a result of this success, in March 2007, YouTube launched their own awards promotion to honor some of the site's best videos. Seven shortlists were compiled, with ten videos per shortlist. Singer Damian Kulash (pictured), whose band OK Go won in the Most Creative category for their music video Here It Goes Again, described receiving a YouTube Award as a "surreal honor". The YouTube Awards returned the following year, to commemorate the best videos of 2007. This year, the number of categories was expanded from seven to twelve, while the number of videos per shortlist was reduced from ten to six. (Full list...)

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Today's featured picture

The Kiss is an 1859 painting by the Italian artist Francesco Hayez, possibly his best known work. The painting symbolizes the romantic, nationalist and patriotic ideals of the Risorgimento, the movement towards Italian unification. Outwardly a passionate embrace between two anonymous individuals, the image has hidden meaning; shadowy figures at bottom left give an impression of conspiracy and danger. The man's foot resting on the step and the tight grasp with which his beloved is holding him convey the imminence of his departure. The dagger hidden in the mantle may refer to the imminent rebellion against the Habsburg invader, and the chromatic range of the picture symbolizes the political changes that involved Italy at the time, the blue of the woman's dress and the bright red of the young man's tights alluding to the colours of the French flag.

The picture is in the collection of the Pinacoteca di Brera in Milan.

Painting credit: Francesco Hayez

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