Wikipedia:Main Page history/2019 November 10

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From today's featured article

Mary Bell at a council meeting of the Women's Air Training Corps, 1941

Mary Bell (3 December 1903 – 6 February 1979), nicknamed "Paddy", was an Australian aviator and founding leader of the Women's Air Training Corps, a volunteer organisation that provided support to the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) during World War II. She later helped establish the Women's Auxiliary Australian Air Force (WAAAF), the first and largest women's wartime service in the country, which grew to more than 18,000 members by 1944. Born Mary Fernandes in Launceston, Tasmania, she married John Bell, an RAAF officer, in 1923 and obtained a pilot's licence in 1927. Given temporary command of the WAAAF on its formation in 1941, she was passed over as its inaugural director in favour of corporate executive Clare Stevenson. Bell refused the post of deputy director and resigned, but later rejoined and served until the final months of the war. She and her husband became farmers after leaving the military. (Full article...)

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Did you know ...

Lois Ellen Frank

... that when Lois Ellen Frank (pictured) first proposed her 2003 James Beard Award–winning cookbook on Native American foods, publishers told her there was no such cuisine?
... that players are only likely to hear around one-third of all the music created for Red Dead Redemption 2 in a standard playthrough?
... that before becoming a film director, Nepal's Nischal Basnet went to Australia to study 3D animation, but ended up studying hospitality and becoming a chef?
... that today's MLS Cup 2019 will be the third cup final in four years to feature Seattle Sounders FC and Toronto FC?
... that Christof Nel staged the world premiere of Thomas Brasch's play Rotter and the first production in German of Aulis Sallinen's opera Kullervo?
... that in a single week in 1992, a four-man team including Mick Fowler and Andy Nisbet climbed all the main stacks of the Drongs?
... that Christina Maria Rantetana was buried in a combined military-traditional funeral, with a salvo of shots as her body was placed in a niche 30 metres (100 ft) up a cliff?
... that Hawaii radio station KKON's change of format from "beautiful music" to a rock-and-roll/country mix in 1974 lasted just one day?

In the news

Duane Vermeulen

Scientists describe Danuvius guggenmosi, a new species of ancient great ape capable of upright walking.
In rugby union, the World Cup concludes with South Africa defeating England in the final (player of the match Duane Vermeulen pictured).
A series of earthquakes hits Mindanao, Philippines, killing at least 21 people.
A fire on a passenger train near Liaquatpur, Pakistan, kills at least 75 people.

On this day

November 10: Mawlid (Sunni Islam, 2019); Noor Hossain Day in Bangladesh (1987)

Caroll Spinney with his
Oscar the Grouch puppet

1865 – Henry Wirz, the Confederate superintendent of Andersonville Prison, was hanged after a controversial conviction, becoming the only American Civil War soldier executed for war crimes.
1945 – Indonesian National Revolution: Following the killing of British officer Brigadier A. W. S. Mallaby a few weeks earlier, British forces retaliated by attacking Surabaya.
1969 – The children's television series Sesame Street (puppeteer Caroll Spinney pictured) premiered in the United States.
1975 – SS Edmund Fitzgerald, the largest ship on North America's Great Lakes, sank in Lake Superior with the loss of 29 lives.
2009 – Ships of the South Korean and North Korean navies skirmished off Daecheong Island in the Yellow Sea.

Andrés Manuel del Río (b. 1764) · Gaetano Bresci (b. 1869) · Mary Millar (d. 1998)

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Today's featured picture

Les Grandes Baigneuses ('The Large Bathers') is an oil-on-canvas painting by French artist Pierre-Auguste Renoir, produced between 1884 and 1887. The painting depicts a scene of nude women bathing. In the foreground, two women are seated beside the water, and a third is standing in the water near them. In the background, two others are bathing. Renoir's intention was to reconcile the modern forms of painting with the painting traditions of the 17th and 18th centuries, particularly those of Ingres and Raphael. The painting is now in the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Painting credit: Pierre-Auguste Renoir

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