Wikipedia:Main Page history/2019 May 13

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From today's featured article

Interstate 94 (I-94) in Michigan is a part of the U.S. Interstate Highway System that runs east from the Indiana state line near Lake Michigan through the southern Lower Peninsula to Detroit, then northeast to Port Huron. I-94 extends west to Billings, Montana. In Michigan, it is a state trunkline highway serving Benton Harbor, St. Joseph, Kalamazoo, Battle Creek, Jackson, Ann Arbor, and The Thumb, terminating on the Blue Water Bridge at the Canadian border. By 1960, I-94 was completed from New Buffalo to Detroit, and most of the rest of the route was completed in the 1960s. The highway has one auxiliary route in Michigan, I-194 in Battle Creek, and eight business routes. In 1987, a plane crashed on the freeway during take-off from the airport in Detroit. The routing of I-94 contains the first full freeway-to-freeway interchange in the United States, and comprises the first complete border-to-border toll-free freeway in a U.S. state. (Full article...)

Part of the Interstate Highways in Michigan series, one of Wikipedia's featured topics.

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Did you know...

Oxycomanthus bennetti, a species of crinoid

... that crinoids (example pictured) are closely related to sea urchins and starfish?
... that Colonel Pavlos Kouroupis was the first commanding officer defending Cyprus at the start of the Turkish invasion and is considered the first missing person of the conflict?
... that the Maybrat language of West Papua traditionally uses a base-5 counting system?
... that D. J. Butler worked as a corporate attorney for more than ten years before beginning his career as a speculative fiction writer?
... that the early study of the geology of China led to the idea of a changeable climate and that drinking dissolved fossils was good for your health?
... that Wolfgang Meyer, who recorded Mozart's Clarinet Concerto on a historical basset clarinet, played his last concert with jazz saxophonist Peter Lehel?
... that the U.S. Supreme Court case of Bowen v. Georgetown University Hospital held that federal agencies cannot promulgate retroactive rules without express authorization by Congress?
... that a player once danced with Canadian hockey referee Fred Page at center ice after scoring a goal?

In the news

Judd Trump

Judd Trump (pictured) wins the World Snooker Championship, defeating John Higgins in the final.
The United Nations reports that, due to human activity, the Earth's biodiversity has suffered a catastrophic decline unprecedented in human history.
At least 29 people are killed in clashes at the Gaza–Israel border.
Aeroflot Flight 1492 crash-lands and bursts into flames at Sheremetyevo International Airport, Moscow, killing 41 of the 78 people on board.

On this day

May 13

Great Comet of 1861

1779 – Russian and French mediators negotiated the Treaty of Teschen to end the War of the Bavarian Succession.
1861 – The Australian astronomer John Tebbutt discovered the Great Comet of 1861 (depicted), through the tail of which the Earth passed later that year.
1940 – Three days after becoming Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Winston Churchill gave his "blood, toil, tears, and sweat" speech to the House of Commons.
1995 – Alison Hargreaves became the first woman to reach the summit of Mount Everest without the aid of Sherpas or bottled oxygen.
2014 – The worst mining disaster in Turkish history took place when an explosion caused an underground mine fire at a coal mine in Soma, Manisa, leaving 301 people dead.

Kate Marsden (b. 1859) · Inge Lehmann (b. 1888) · Jagdish Mali (d. 2013)

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From today's featured list

1928 Polish national ice hockey team

Poland has been represented by 18 goaltenders and 136 skaters in men's ice hockey tournaments at the Olympic Games. The men's tournament was introduced as a demonstration sport at the 1920 Summer Olympics, and made a permanent sport when the Winter Olympics began in 1924. The Polish national team has participated in thirteen tournaments, first in 1928 (team pictured) and most recently in 1992. Poland has never finished higher than fourth at the Olympics, which they achieved at the 1932 Winter Olympics, when only four teams participated. Hilary Skarżyński has scored the most goals for Poland, with nine, while Andrzej Fonfara and Andrzej Zabawa have had the most assists, with seven each. Zabawa and Wiesław Jobczyk have each recorded fourteen points, the most of any Polish player. Henryk Gruth and Jerzy Potz have competed in the most Olympics, having each taken part in four tournaments, while Gruth has played the most games of any skater, with twenty-four. (Full list...)

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Today's featured picture

Anne Duvivier, comtesse de Vergennes (1730–1798), also known as Annette Duvivier or de Viviers, was the wife of the French statesman and diplomat Charles Gravier, comte de Vergennes, ambassador to the Ottoman Empire. Her first marriage was to Francesco Testa, a merchant and member of one of the oldest Latin families of Péra, but she was widowed at the age of 24. She then lived as Gravier's mistress for some time before the couple married without the consent of King Louis XV, for which he was later recalled. They went on to have two daughters.

This picture is an oil-on-canvas portrait of Duvivier by the French painter Antoine de Favray from the second half of the 18th century, titled Portrait of the Countess of Vergennes in Turkish Attire. She is portrayed on a divan in oriental costume, shortly before she married Gravier. The painting now hangs in the Pera Museum in Istanbul.

Painting credit: Antoine de Favray

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