The Wikipedia article of the day for October 19, 2016 is Komm, du süße Todesstunde, BWV 161.
Komm, du süße Todesstunde (Come, o sweet hour of death), BWV 161, is a church cantata composed by Johann Sebastian Bach in Weimar for the 16th Sunday after Trinity Sunday, and probably first performed in 1716. The text, provided by the court poet Salomon Franck, was based on the prescribed gospel reading about the young man from Nain, and reflected on longing for death, seen as a transition to a life united with Jesus. The cantata in six movements opens with alternating arias and recitatives, leading to a chorus and a concluding chorale, a stanza of the hymn “Herzlich tut mich verlangen” by Christoph Knoll. The chorale tune appears in the first movement, played by the organ, providing a unity to the composition. Bach scored the work for alto and tenor soloists, a four-part choir, and a Baroque chamber ensemble of recorders, strings and continuo. In one recitative, he creates the images of sleep, of waking up, and of funeral bells. Although the libretto was published in a collection in 1715, Bach probably did not perform it until September 1716, due to a long period of public mourning in the duchy for the brother of Duke Ernst August.
Archives for October 2016
Wikipedia article of the day for October 19, 2016
Wikipedia article of the day for October 18, 2016
The Wikipedia article of the day for October 18, 2016 is Freida Pinto.
Freida Pinto (born 18 October 1984) is an Indian actress who has appeared mainly in American and British films. Born and raised in Mumbai, she decided to become an actress at a young age. She was educated at St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai, where she took part in amateur plays. After graduation, she briefly worked as a model and then as a television presenter. Pinto made her cinematic debut with the British drama Slumdog Millionaire (2008), for which she received several nominations at the British Academy Film Awards, the MTV Movie Awards and the Teen Choice Awards. Her biggest commercial success came with the 2011 science fiction film Rise of the Planet of the Apes. The same year, she portrayed the title character in Michael Winterbottom’s Trishna. Her performance in the biographical film Desert Dancer (2014) received critical acclaim. Although the Indian media has credited Pinto with breaking stereotypes of Indian women in foreign films, she has been a lesser-known figure in Indian cinema. She is a vocal advocate for underprivileged children and women.
Wikipedia article of the day for October 17, 2016
The Wikipedia article of the day for October 17, 2016 is Melford Stevenson.
Melford Stevenson (17 October 1902 – 26 December 1987) was an English High Court judge. He was Judge Advocate at the 1945 war crimes trial of submariners from the U-852 for the Peleus affair. In 1954 Stevenson represented the UK Government during Jomo Kenyatta’s unsuccessful appeal against his conviction for his part in the Mau Mau Uprising. He represented the litigants in the Crichel Down affair, which led to changes in the law on compulsory purchase. In 1955 he defended Ruth Ellis, the last woman to be executed in the UK, and in 1957 took part in the unsuccessful prosecution of suspected serial killer John Bodkin Adams. As a High Court judge he gave life sentences in 1969 to the Kray twins for murder, and in 1971 gave Jake Prescott of the Angry Brigade fifteen years for conspiracy to cause explosions. When another judge, Sir Robin Dunn, described him as “the worst judge since the war”, Lord Roskill pointed out that Stevenson could be merciful to those he saw as victims. He retired in 1979, and died in 1987.
Wikipedia article of the day for October 16, 2016
The Wikipedia article of the day for October 16, 2016 is History of Ipswich Town F.C..
Ipswich Town F.C. has a long history as an English association football club based in Ipswich, Suffolk. Founded on 16 October 1878, they have played at Portman Road, their home stadium, since 1884. They won their first trophy in the 1886–87 season over Ipswich School in the Suffolk Challenge Cup. The team played amateur football until 1936 when they turned professional and were elected into the Southern League. On 30 May 1938 they were elected into Division Three of the Football League in place of Gillingham F.C. They won the Football League Championship in 1961–62, one season after winning promotion from the Second Division. A decade later, under the guidance of Bobby Robson (pictured), they achieved success both in the FA Cup and in European competition, winning the UEFA Cup in 1981. Both Robson and Sir Alf Ramsey moved on from Ipswich to manage the England national football team, presiding over the team’s best results in the World Cup: fourth place in 1990 and world champions in 1966.
Wikipedia article of the day for October 15, 2016
The Wikipedia article of the day for October 15, 2016 is H-58 (Michigan county highway).
H-58 is a county-designated highway in the US state of Michigan that runs east–west 69 miles (111 km) between the communities of Munising and Deer Park in the Upper Peninsula. The western section is routed through Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore, a national park on Lake Superior that was created on October 15, 1966, and through the adjacent Lake Superior State Forest in Alger County. A roadway was present along parts of today’s H-58 by the late 1920s; initially, this gravel and earth county road between Munising and Kingston Corners connected with other roads to Grand Marais. In the 1930s, another segment was built to connect to Deer Park and to fill in the gap between Kingston Corners and Grand Marais. The H-58 designation was created after the county-designated highway system itself was formed in 1970. Federal legislation from the 1990s allowed the National Park Service to fund improvements to H-58 as the main access road to the park. Paving projects were completed between 2006 and 2010 along the entire length of H-58 in Alger County; the segment in Luce County is still a gravel road.
Wikipedia article of the day for October 14, 2016
The Wikipedia article of the day for October 14, 2016 is Norman conquest of England.
The Norman conquest of England was the invasion and occupation of England by an army of Norman, Breton, and French soldiers, led by Duke William II of Normandy, later styled as William the Conqueror. The invasion culminated in the Battle of Hastings on 14 October 1066. William’s claim to the English throne derived from his familial relationship with the childless Anglo-Saxon King Edward the Confessor, who died in January 1066 and was succeeded by his brother-in-law Harold Godwinson. After the Norwegian king Harald Hardrada invaded northern England in September, Harold defeated and killed him at the Battle of Stamford Bridge. Within days, William landed in southern England. Harold marched south to confront him, but left a significant portion of his army in the north, and was defeated and killed by William’s force at Hastings. William faced rebellions for years, and was not secure on his throne until after 1072. He confiscated the lands of the resisting English elite, some of whom fled into exile. To control his new kingdom, William gave lands to his followers and built castles commanding military strongpoints.
Wikipedia article of the day for October 12, 2016
The Wikipedia article of the day for October 12, 2016 is Gold dollar.
The gold dollar was a coin struck as a regular issue by the United States Bureau of the Mint from 1849 to 1889. The coin had three types over its lifetime, all designed by Mint Chief Engraver James B. Longacre. The Type 1 issue had the smallest diameter of any United States coin ever minted. A gold dollar had been proposed several times in the 1830s and 1840s, but was not initially adopted. Congress was finally galvanized into action by the increased supply of bullion from the California gold rush, and in 1849 authorized a gold dollar. In its early years, silver coins were being hoarded or exported, and the gold dollar found a ready place in commerce. Silver again circulated after Congress required in 1853 that new coins of that metal be made lighter, and the gold dollar became a rarity in commerce even before federal coins vanished from circulation amid the economic disruption of the American Civil War. Gold did not circulate again in most of the nation until 1879, and even then, the gold dollar did not regain its place in commerce. In its final years, struck in small numbers, it was hoarded by speculators and mounted in jewelry.
Wikipedia article of the day for October 11, 2016
The Wikipedia article of the day for October 11, 2016 is Zapata rail.
The Zapata rail (Cyanolimnas cerverai) is a medium-sized, dark-coloured rail. It has brown upperparts, greyish-blue underparts, a red-based yellow bill, white undertail coverts, and red eyes and legs. Its short wings render it almost flightless. It is endemic to the wetlands of the Zapata Peninsula in southern Cuba, where its only known nest was found in sawgrass tussocks. Little is known of its diet or reproductive behaviour, and its described calls may belong to a different species. The Zapata rail was discovered by Spanish zoologist Fermín Zanón Cervera in March 1927 in the Zapata Swamp near Santo Tomás, in the southern Matanzas Province of Cuba. The swamp holds one other bird found nowhere else, the Zapata wren, and also gives its name to the Zapata sparrow. Due to ongoing habitat loss in its limited range, its small population size, and predation by introduced mammals and catfish, the Zapata rail is evaluated as critically endangered on the International Union for the Conservation of Nature’s Red List of threatened species. The swamp is listed as an internationally important wetland by the Convention on Wetlands.
Wikipedia article of the day for October 10, 2016
The Wikipedia article of the day for October 10, 2016 is Wendell Willkie.
Wendell Willkie (1892–1944) was an American corporate executive and the 1940 Republican candidate for president. In 1933 he became president of Commonwealth & Southern Corporation (C&S), a utility holding company. He fought against President Franklin Roosevelt’s Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), a publicly owned competitor of C&S; though unsuccessful, he sold C&S’s property to the TVA for a good price, and gained public esteem. A longtime Democratic activist, Willkie changed his party registration to Republican in late 1939. He did not run in the 1940 presidential primaries, but positioned himself as an acceptable choice for a deadlocked convention. As Hitler rampaged through Western Europe in the spring of 1940, many Republicans did not wish to nominate an isolationist like Thomas E. Dewey, and turned to Willkie, who was nominated on the sixth ballot. His support for aid to Britain paralleled Roosevelt’s, defying Republican opposition. Roosevelt won a third term, taking 38 of the 48 states and 55 percent of the vote. Willkie made two wartime foreign trips as Roosevelt’s informal envoy.
Wikipedia article of the day for October 9, 2016
The Wikipedia article of the day for October 9, 2016 is Russian battleship Potemkin.
The Russian battleship Potemkin was a pre-dreadnought battleship built for the Imperial Russian Navy’s Black Sea Fleet and launched 9 October 1900. The crew’s rebellion against the officers in June 1905 (during that year’s revolution) is now viewed as a first step towards the Russian Revolution of 1917. After the mutineers sought asylum in Constanța, Romania, and the Russians recovered the ship, her name was changed to Panteleimon. She accidentally sank a Russian submarine in 1909 and was badly damaged when she ran aground in 1911. During World War I, Panteleimon participated in the Battle of Cape Sarych in late 1914 and covered several bombardments of the Ottoman Bosphorus fortifications in early 1915. The ship was relegated to secondary roles after the first dreadnought battleship entered service in late 1915. Panteleimon was captured when the Germans took Sevastopol in May 1918 and was handed over to the Allies after the Armistice in November 1918. She was abandoned when the White Russians evacuated the Crimea in 1920 and was finally scrapped by the Soviets in 1923. The 1905 mutiny inspired Sergei Eisenstein’s 1925 silent propaganda film The Battleship Potemkin.
