The Wikipedia article of the day for March 31, 2017 is Cincinnati Musical Center half dollar.
The Cincinnati Musical Center half dollar is a commemorative coin that was authorized on March 31, 1936, and struck by the United States Bureau of the Mint that year. Produced with the stated purpose of commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of Cincinnati as a center of music, it was conceived by Thomas G. Melish, a coin enthusiast whose group bought the entire issue from the government, and who resold them at high prices. Melish had hired sculptor Constance Ortmayer to design the coin, but the Commission of Fine Arts objected to Stephen Foster being on the obverse, finding no connection between Foster, who died in 1864, and the supposed anniversary. Nevertheless, 5,000 sets of three coins, one from each of the three mints, were issued and sold to Melish’s group, the only authorized purchaser. He likely held back much of the issue for later resale, and with few pieces available, prices spiked to over five times the issue price. The coins are still valuable today. Melish has been assailed by numismatic writers as greedy.
Archives for March 2017
Wikipedia article of the day for March 31, 2017
Wikipedia article of the day for March 30, 2017
The Wikipedia article of the day for March 30, 2017 is Juan Manuel de Rosas.
Juan Manuel de Rosas (30 March 1793 – 14 March 1877) was an army officer who ruled Buenos Aires Province and briefly the Argentine Confederation. Like other wealthy provincial warlords, Rosas enlisted rural workers from his landholdings in a private militia, and took part in the numerous disputes and civil wars in his country. He eventually became the undisputed leader of the Argentine army and the Federalist Party. In 1831, he signed the Federal Pact, recognizing provincial autonomy and creating the Argentine Confederation. He established a dictatorship and formed the repressive Mazorca, an armed parapolice that killed thousands of citizens. By 1848, after a war against the Peru–Bolivian Confederation, a blockade by France, and a revolt in his own province, he ruled all of Argentina, and was attempting to annex the neighboring nations of Uruguay and Paraguay. When the Empire of Brazil came to Uruguay’s aid, Rosas declared war in August 1851. The short Platine War ended with the defeat of Rosas and his flight to Britain. His last years were spent in exile living as a tenant farmer.
Wikipedia article of the day for March 29, 2017
The Wikipedia article of the day for March 29, 2017 is Boise National Forest.
Boise National Forest is a federally protected area of the U.S. state of Idaho in the national forest system. Created in 1908 from part of Sawtooth National Forest, it is managed by the U.S. Forest Service. The Idaho Batholith underlies most of Boise National Forest, forming its Boise, Salmon River, and West mountain ranges; the forest reaches a maximum elevation of 9,730 feet (2,970 m) on Steel Mountain. Common land cover includes sagebrush steppe and spruce-fir forests. It contains 75 percent of the known populations of Sacajawea’s bitterroot, a flowering plant endemic to Idaho. The Shoshone people occupied the forest before European settlers, and archeological sites have been found along rivers in the area. Trappers and fur traders of European descent arrived in the area in the early 1800s, starting with John Jacob Astor’s Pacific Fur Company in 1811. The first settlers moved into the mountains in the 1860s after gold was discovered. The gold rush forced many of the Shoshone out and led to conflicts including the Bannock War in southern Idaho. Tungsten, silver, antimony, and gold were mined in the forest until the mid-twentieth century.
Wikipedia article of the day for March 28, 2017
The Wikipedia article of the day for March 28, 2017 is Military service of Ian Smith.
Ian Smith served in the British Royal Air Force during the Second World War. The future Rhodesian Prime Minister was posted to No. 237 (Rhodesia) Squadron, then stationed in the Middle East, in late 1942. He flew in the Western Desert in 1943 until a crash during a night takeoff resulted in facial disfigurements and a broken jaw. Following reconstructive plastic surgery to his face, other operations, and five months’ convalescence, he rejoined No. 237 Squadron. In June 1944, when his plane was shot down by flak in northern Italy, he parachuted into the Ligurian Alps, behind German lines. He spent three months working with the local resistance movement before trekking westwards across the Maritime Alps to join up with the Allied forces that had just invaded southern France. He continued to fly combat missions until Germany surrendered. In 1965, Rhodesia’s long history of military support for the mother country was one of the factors that led to the Smith administration’s Unilateral Declaration of Independence.
Wikipedia article of the day for March 27, 2017
The Wikipedia article of the day for March 27, 2017 is Mayabazar.
Mayabazar (Market of Illusions) is an Indian epic fantasy film directed by Kadiri Venkata Reddy and produced by B. Nagi Reddy and Aluri Chakrapani, first released on 27 March 1957. The film was shot in Telugu and Tamil with the same title, but with a few differences in the cast. The story is an adaptation of the folk tale Sasirekha Parinayam, which in turn is based on the epic Mahabharata. It tells the story of Krishna (N. T. Rama Rao) and Ghatotkacha (S. V. Ranga Rao), who try to reunite Arjuna’s son Abhimanyu with his love, Balarama’s daughter (Savitri). Though Rama Rao was initially reluctant to play the lead role, his portrayal of Krishna received acclaim and yielded more offers to reprise the same role in several unrelated films. Most of the musical score was composed by Ghantasala. Both versions of the film were critically and commercially successful. The film is considered a landmark in both Telugu and Tamil cinema, with praise for its cast and technical accomplishments, despite the limitations of the technology at the time. A May 2013 CNN-News18 poll listed Mayabazar as the greatest Indian film of all time.
Wikipedia article of the day for March 26, 2017
The Wikipedia article of the day for March 26, 2017 is Interstate 8.
Interstate 8 (I-8) is an Interstate Highway in the southwestern United States. From the southern edge of Mission Bay in San Diego, California, it runs eastward across the Cuyamaca Mountains and the Imperial Valley. Crossing the Colorado River into Arizona, it continues through the city of Yuma across the Sonoran Desert, to the junction with I-10, between Phoenix and Tucson. The first route over the Cuyamaca Mountains was dedicated in 1912, and a plank road served as the first road across the Imperial Valley to Yuma; east of there, the Gila Trail continued east to Gila Bend. Several controversies erupted during I-8’s construction process; questionable labor practices in Imperial County led to the federal conviction of mobster Jimmy Fratianno, and the Arizona government was found to have mismanaged financial resources by a U.S. House of Representatives subcommittee. The route was completed in 1975 through California, and by 1977 through Arizona, though the bridge over the Colorado River was not completed until 1978. A portion of the freeway in Imperial County had to be rebuilt following damage by the remnants of Hurricane Kathleen.
Wikipedia article of the day for March 25, 2017
The Wikipedia article of the day for March 25, 2017 is Jean Bellette.
Jean Bellette (25 March 1908 – 16 March 1991) was an Australian artist. Born in Tasmania, she was educated in Hobart and at Julian Ashton’s art school in Sydney, where her teachers included Thea Proctor. In London she studied under painters Bernard Meninsky and Mark Gertler. A modernist painter, Bellette was influential in mid-twentieth-century Sydney art circles. She frequently painted scenes influenced by the Greek tragedies of Euripedes, Sophocles and Homer. The only woman to win the Sulman Prize more than once, Bellette claimed the accolade in 1942 with For Whom the Bell Tolls, and in 1944 with Iphigenia in Tauris. She helped found the Blake Prize for religious art, and was its inaugural judge. Bellette and her husband, the artist and critic Paul Haefliger, owned a cottage in Hill End, an old gold mining village in central New South Wales. Bellette bequeathed the cottage to the National Parks and Wildlife Service (which manages the Hill End historic site) for use as an artists’ retreat. It continues to operate for that purpose.
Wikipedia article of the day for March 24, 2017
The Wikipedia article of the day for March 24, 2017 is Piano Concerto No. 24 (Mozart).
The Piano Concerto No. 24 in C minor, K. 491, is a concerto by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart for keyboard (period fortepiano pictured) and orchestra. He composed it in the winter of 1785–86 and completed it on 24 March 1786. He played the solo part in the premiere in early April that year at the Burgtheater in Vienna. The work is one of only two minor-key piano concertos by Mozart, the other being No. 20 in D Minor. It features the largest array of instruments of any Mozart concerto: strings, woodwinds including oboes and clarinets, horns, trumpets and timpani. The concerto consists of three movements. The first, Allegro, is in sonata form and is longer than any opening movement of Mozart’s earlier concertos. The second movement, Larghetto, features a strikingly simple principal theme, and the final Allegretto presents a theme followed by eight variations. The work is one of Mozart’s most advanced compositions in the concerto genre. Early admirers included Ludwig van Beethoven and Johannes Brahms. The musicologist Arthur Hutchings considered it to be Mozart’s greatest piano concerto.
Wikipedia article of the day for March 23, 2017
The Wikipedia article of the day for March 23, 2017 is Oran fatwa.
The Oran fatwa was an Islamic legal opinion issued in 1504 to address the forced conversion to Christianity of Muslims in the Crown of Castile in Iberia in 1500–1502. The fatwa sets out detailed relaxations of the sharia (Islamic law) requirements, allowing the Muslims to conform outwardly to Christianity and perform acts that are ordinarily forbidden in Islamic law, when necessary to survive. It includes relaxed instructions to fulfill the ritual prayers, charity and purification, and recommendations for how to handle obligations that violated Islamic law, such as worshipping as Christians, performing blasphemy, and consuming pork and wine. The fatwa enjoyed wide currency in Spain among Muslims and Moriscos – Muslims nominally converted to Christianity and their descendants – from the time of the first forced conversions up to the expulsion of the Moriscos (1609–1614). The author of the fatwa was Ahmad ibn Abi Jum’ah, a North African Islamic law scholar (mufti) of the Maliki school.
Wikipedia article of the day for March 22, 2017
The Wikipedia article of the day for March 22, 2017 is SMS Kaiser (1911).
SMS Kaiser was the lead ship of her class of battleships of the Imperial German Navy. The ship was built by the Imperial Dockyard at Kiel, launched on 22 March 1911, and commissioned in August 1912 with ten 30.5-centimeter (12.0 in) guns and a top speed of 23.4 knots (43.3 km/h; 26.9 mph). Kaiser was assigned to the Third Squadron of the High Seas Fleet for the majority of World War I. The ship participated in most of the major fleet operations of the war, including the Battle of Jutland on 31 May – 1 June 1916, where she was hit once, suffering negligible damage. The ship was also present during Operation Albion in the Baltic Sea in September and October 1917, and at the Second Battle of Heligoland Bight in November 1917. After the war she was interned with other ships of the High Seas Fleet at Scapa Flow in Scotland. In June 1919 the commander of the interned fleet, Rear Admiral Ludwig von Reuter, ordered the fleet to be scuttled to ensure that the British would not be able to seize the ships. Kaiser’s wreck was raised in 1929 and broken up in Rosyth in 1930.
