Wikipedia:Main Page history/2021 April 23b

From today's featured article

Breeding plumage of the pigeon guillemot

The pigeon guillemot (Cepphus columba) is a seabird in the auk family, Alcidae. It is dark brown with a black iridescent sheen and a distinctive wing patch broken by a brown-black wedge in breeding plumage. Its non-breeding plumage has mottled grey and black upperparts and white underparts. The long bill is black, as are the claws. The legs, feet, and inside of the mouth are red. It closely resembles the black guillemot, which is slightly smaller and lacks the dark wing wedge; combined, the two form a superspecies. Pigeon guillemots are found on North Pacific coastal waters, from Siberia through AlaskatoCalifornia. They dive and pursue prey underwater, mostly small fish and marine invertebrates near the sea floor. They are monogamous breeders, nesting in small colonies close to the shore. Both parents incubate the eggs and feed the chicks. The species has a large, stable population and wide range. (Full article...)

Did you know ...

The Arthurian murals at Oxford

• ... that James Edward Rogers helped Dante Gabriel Rossetti and William Morris search for a model for Guinevere for the Oxford Union murals (pictured)?
• ... that the Piano Quartet, composed by Robert Schumann in 1842 for piano and strings, was described by his wife Clara as "a beautiful work, so youthful and fresh, as if it were his first"?
• ... that Nellah Massey Bailey became the first woman to be elected statewide in Mississippi in 1947, less than a year after the death of her husband Governor Thomas L. Bailey?
• ... that the assassination of Talat Pasha to avenge the Armenian Genocide resulted in "one of the most spectacular trials of the twentieth century"?
• ... that author Giacomo Sartori has named his day job as a soil scientist as an influence on his work?
• ... that the village of Adatepe in Turkey, formerly inhabited by Greeks, was revived in the 1980s when the traditional stone houses were restored by people seeking to escape city life?
• ... that a dance move originally performed by Big Bang's G-Dragon became a trend in Vietnam due to efforts by Khá Bảnh?
• ... that during the Stratford General Strike of 1933 the Canadian military was brought in, with machine guns, to which the strikers responded with a rally and a parade?

In the news

Mars Oxygen ISRU Experiment

• The Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment (engineering model pictured) on the Perseverance rover produces oxygen from carbon dioxide in the Martian atmosphere.
• KRI Nanggala, an Indonesian Navy submarine, goes missing in the Bali Sea with 53 people on board.
• In the United States, former police officer Derek Chauvinisfound guilty of the murder of George Floyd.
• President of Chad Idriss Déby is killed during a rebel offensive.
• Miguel Díaz-Canel is selected as First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba, succeeding Raúl Castro.

On this day

Edmund Ironside

• 1016 – Edmund Ironside (pictured) became King of England, reigning for only seven months before the country was conquered by Cnut the Great.
• 1516 – The best-known version of the Reinheitsgebot, a German law on the purity of beer, was adopted in Bavaria.
• 1918 – First World War: The British Royal Navy conducted an unsuccessful raid on the German-occupied Port of Zeebrugge in Belgium.
• 1951 – American journalist William N. Oatis was arrested for espionage by the communist government of Czechoslovakia.
• 1971 – The Rolling Stones released Sticky Fingers, the first album on their own label, Rolling Stones Records.