Wikipedia:Main Page history/2020 September 29

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From today's featured article

Valston Hancock (31 May 1907 – 29 September 1998) was a senior commander in the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF). A graduate of the Royal Military College, Duntroon, Hancock transferred to the RAAF in 1929 and qualified as a pilot. After fifteen years of occupying staff and training posts, he saw combat in the Aitape–Wewak campaign of the Pacific War during 1945. Flying Bristol Beaufort light bombers, he led No. 100 Squadron, and later No. 71 Wing, earning the Distinguished Flying Cross. After the war, Hancock became the inaugural commandant of RAAF College, followed by a succession of senior positions, before being promoted to air marshal and serving as Chief of the Air Staff from 1961 to 1965. He was knighted in 1962. In his role as the Air Force's senior officer, Hancock continued the policy of developing a chain of forward airfields in Northern Australia. He also evaluated potential replacements for the RAAF's English Electric Canberra bomber. (Full article...)

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Did you know ...

Trapped tiger (1854) by Eugène Delacroix

... that Eugène Delacroix's only work in the semiphotographic cliché verre printmaking technique depicts a tiger at bay (pictured)?
... that the 2020 World Series will be the first to be held at one ballpark since 1944?
... that Hainer Hill, who took hundreds of photographs documenting Brecht's Berliner Ensemble, created the stage design for Hindemith's Mathis der Maler at the new Opernhaus Dortmund in 1966?
... that at civil disobedience events, undocumented students from Freedom U wear painted monarch butterfly wings symbolizing migration's naturalness and their immigrant experience?
... that the European Court of Human Rights has ruled that burqa bans may be "necessary in a democratic society"?
... that in 1995, French journalist Didier Roustan helped set up a world footballers union with Eric Cantona and Diego Maradona?
... that "On the Death of Mr. Crashaw", an elegy for Richard Crashaw, is considered one of Abraham Cowley's finest poems?
... that in 1949 the admirals were revolting?

In the news

COVID-19 pandemic: Disease; Virus; By location; Impact; Portal

Cyclone Ianos

Azerbaijani and Armenian armed forces clash in Nagorno-Karabakh, prompting the introduction of martial law in both countries and mobilization in Armenia.
Bah Ndaw takes office as Mali's interim president following a coup d'état the previous month.
Cyclone Ianos (satellite image shown) stalls over Greece, killing four people and flooding several cities.
At the Primetime Emmy Awards, Schitt's Creek wins in seven comedy categories and Succession wins in four drama categories.

On this day

September 29: Michaelmas (Western Christianity)

Alouette 1 before launch

1923 – The Mandate for Palestine came into effect, officially creating the protectorates of Palestine under British administration and Transjordan as a separate emirate under Abdullah I.
1940 – Two Avro Ansons of the Royal Australian Air Force collided in mid-air over Brocklesby, but locked together and were landed safely.
1962 – Alouette I (pictured), Canada's first satellite, and the first constructed by a country other than the Soviet Union or the United States, was launched.
1963 – The University of East Anglia was founded in Norwich, England, after talk of establishing a university in the city began as early as the 19th century.
1990 – The Lockheed YF-22, the prototype for the F-22 Raptor, made its first flight.

René Goupil (d. 1642)
Guadalupe Victoria (b. 1786)
Michael A. Monsoor (d. 2006)

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Today's featured picture

Jacob Cornelisz van Oostsanen (before 1470 – 1533) was a Northern Netherlandish painter and designer of woodcuts. This oil-on-panel painting, by his son Dirck Jacobsz., depicts Van Oostsanen painting a portrait of his wife Anna. Though Van Oostsanen had died in 1533, his wife lived until around 1550, the year in which this work was painted. Its format ingeniously incorporates the viewer in its fiction. The painter looks out, presumably at his subject, whose likeness he is depicting. The work may have been intended to serve as a memorial to Jacobsz.'s parents, to be installed above the couple's tomb in a church.

Painting credit: Dirck Jacobsz.

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