Wikipedia:Today's featured article/April 2004
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April 1
The Byzantine Empire was the eastern section of the Roman Empire which remained in existence after the fall of the west. The empire is commonly considered to have existed from AD 395 to 1453. The empire reached its height under the Macedonian emperors of the late 9th, 10th and early 11th centuries. The Fourth Crusade had a devastating effect on the empire, and it was conquered by the Ottoman Empire in the 15th century. (more...)
Recently featured: Superman – Jet engine – Yellowstone National Park
April 2
Crushing by elephant was a common capital punishment throughout south and southeast Asia for over 4,000 years. The Romans and Carthaginians also used this method on occasion. Most rajahs kept execution elephants for the purpose of death by crushing and the executions were often held in public to serve as a warning to any who might transgress. The last person to be officially executed by an elephant was put to death in India in April, 1947. (more...)
Recently featured: Byzantine Empire – Superman – Jet engine
April 3
Joshua Abraham Norton was a famous, impoverished and highly eccentric citizen of San Francisco, California in the mid-to-late 19th century. Among his many celebrated and curious activities, he most famously anointed himself as "Emperor of the United States" in 1859, becoming Emperor Norton I. Other notable activities include his ordering the dissolution of the United States Congress and his numerous (and prophetic) decrees that a bridge be built across San Francisco Bay. The King in Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is reportedly modeled after him. (more...)
Recently featured: Crushing by elephant – Byzantine Empire – Superman
April 4
The Platypus is a small, semi-aquatic mammal endemic to the eastern part of Australia, and one of the four monotremes (mammals that lay eggs instead of giving birth to live young). The Platypus looks rather like a beaver: the body and broad, flat tail are covered with brown fur, but it has webbed feet and a large, rubbery snout that led to its being known for a time as the "Duckbilled Platypus". The Platypus is a carnivore. It feeds on worms, insect larvae, freshwater shrimp, and yabbies (freshwater crayfish) that it digs out of river beds with its snout or catches while swimming. (more...)
Recently featured: Joshua Abraham Norton – Crushing by elephant – Byzantine Empire
April 5
A fountain pen is a writing instrument, more specifically a pen, that contains a reservoir of water-based ink that is fed to a nib through a "feed" via a combination of gravity and surface tension. Refilling ink either involves replacing an ink cartridge, filling with an eyedropper, or using one of a variety of internal mechanisms to suck ink from a bottle. The fountain pen was commonly used in the past but has become more of a status symbol and collectible since the mass production of the ballpoint pen and other easier-to-use pens in the mid 20th century. (more...)
Recently featured: Platypus – Joshua Abraham Norton – Crushing by elephant
April 6
Buddhism is the religion and philosophy based on the teachings of Siddhārtha Gautama, who lived between approximately 563 and 483 BCE. This religion originated in India and gradually spread throughout Asia, to Central Asia, Tibet, Sri Lanka, Southeast Asia, as well as the East Asian countries of China, Mongolia, Korea, and Japan. Buddhism is unusual among world religions because it does not involve the worship of gods or other higher beings. For the Buddha, the key to liberation was mental purity and correct understanding, and for this reason he rejected the notion that we can gain salvation by petitioning a distant deity. (more...)
Recently featured: Fountain pen – Platypus – Joshua Abraham Norton
April 7
Chariot racing was one of the most popular ancient Greek and Roman sports. It is unknown exactly when chariot racing began, but it may have been as old as chariots themselves. It is known from artistic evidence on pottery that the sport existed in the Mycenaean world, but the first literary reference to a chariot race is the one described by Homer in Book 23 of the Iliad. In Rome the main centre of chariot racing was the Circus Maximus in the valley between Palatine Hill and Aventine Hill. (more...)
Recently featured: Buddhism – Fountain pen – Platypus
April 8
The Frankfurt School is a school of neo-Marxist social theory, social research, and philosophy. The grouping emerged at the Institute for Social Research (Institut für Sozialforschung) of the University of Frankfurt am Main in Germany in 1930. Responding to the rise of Nazism, they applied the theories of Marx to social conditions that Marx himself had never seen, drawing heavily on the work of Max Weber and Sigmund Freud to fill in Marx's perceived omissions. The Frankfurt School's Herbert Marcuse (photo) was sometimes described as the intellectual progenitor of the New Left. (more...)
Recently featured: Chariot racing – Buddhism – Fountain pen
April 9
The Dreyfus Affair was a political cover-up which divided France for many years in the late 19th century. It centered on the 1894 treason conviction of Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish artillery officer in the French army. Dreyfus was, in fact, innocent: the conviction rested on false documents, and when high-ranking officers realised this they attempted to cover up the mistakes. The writer Emile Zola exposed the affair to the general public in the literary newspaper L'Aurore (The Dawn) in a famous open letter to the Président de la République Félix Faure, titled J'accuse! (I Accuse!) on January 13, 1898. In the words of historian Barbara W. Tuchman, it was "one of the great commotions of history". (more...)
Recently featured: Frankfurt School – Chariot racing – Buddhism
April 10
Heavy metal is a form of rock music characterised by aggressive, driving rhythms, highly amplified guitars, and often dark thematic elements. Heavy metal is an evolutionary product of pop, blues and classical music. Its first wave, between 1967 and 1974, was a product of pop and blues, while the classical element came to the fore in the later 1970s. By approximately 1991 most heavy metal had evolved into other hard rock genres, notably grunge. (more...)
Recently featured: Dreyfus Affair – Frankfurt School – Chariot racing
April 11
The origins of the American Civil War lay in the complex problems of slavery, expansion, sectionalism, parties, and politics of the antebellum era. As territorial expansion forced the United States to confront the question of whether new areas of settlement were to be slave or free, as the power of the slaveholders in national politics waned, and as the North and the South developed starkly divergent economies and societies, the divisive issues of sectionalism catapulted the nation into the Civil War. (more...)
Recently featured: Heavy metal – Dreyfus Affair – Frankfurt School
April 12
A soap bubble is a thin film of soap water that forms a hollow spherical shape with an iridescent surface. Soap bubbles usually last for only a few moments and burst either on their own or on contact with another object. Due to their fragile nature they have also become a metaphor for something that is attractive, yet insubstantial. They are mostly used as a children's plaything, but their usage in artistic performances shows that they can be fascinating for adults too. Soap bubbles can help to solve complex mathematical problems of space, as they will always find the smallest surface area between points or edges. (more...)
Recently featured: Origins of the American Civil War – Heavy metal – Dreyfus Affair
April 13
The game of Rock, Paper, Scissors is a whimsical hand game most often played by children. It is often used in a similar way to coin flipping, throwing dice or drawing straws to randomly select a person for some purpose, though unlike truly random selections it can be played with skill if the game extends over many sessions, because one can often recognize and exploit the non-random behavior of an opponent. Various sports, including ultimate frisbee, may use rock paper scissors to determine which team gets the opening play. It is also often used as a method for creating appropriately biased random results in live action role-playing games, as it requires no equipment. (more...)
Recently featured: soap bubble – Origins of the American Civil War – Heavy metal
April 14
Paul Charles Morphy known as "The Pride and Sorrow of Chess", was generally considered to have been the strongest chess master of his time and an unofficial World Champion. He was also the first American since Benjamin Franklin to have been recognized as the pre-eminent world figure in an intellectual field, as well as the first recorded chess prodigy in history. (more...)
Recently featured: Rock, Paper, Scissors – Soap bubble – Origins of the American Civil War
April 15
Labour economics seeks to understand the functioning of the market for labour. Labour markets function through the interaction of workers and employers. Labour economics looks at the suppliers of labour services (workers), the demanders of labour services (employers), and attempts to understand the resulting pattern of wages, employment, and income. It is an important subject because unemployment is a problem that affects the public most directly and severely. Full employment (or reduced unemployment) is a goal of many governments. (more...)
Recently featured: Paul Charles Morphy – Rock, Paper, Scissors – Soap bubble
April 16
Titanium is a chemical element that has the symbol Ti and atomic number 22 in the periodic table. A light, strong, white-metallic, lustrous, corrosion-resistant transition metal, titanium is used in strong light-weight alloys and in white pigments. This element occurs in numerous minerals with the main sources being rutile and ilmenite. Titanium is a metallic element which is well known for its excellent corrosion resistance (almost as resistant as platinum) and for its high strength-to-weight ratio. (more...)
Recently featured: Labour economics – Paul Charles Morphy – Rock, Paper, Scissors
April 17
Asperger syndrome is a condition related to autism and commonly referred to as a form of "high-functioning" autism. The term was coined by Lorna Wing in a 1981 medical paper; she named it after Hans Asperger, an Austrian psychiatrist and pediatrician whose work was not internationally recognized until the 1990s. Non-autistics possess a comparatively sophisticated sense of other people's mental states. Autists do not have this ability, and the individual with Asperger's can be every bit as "mind-blind" as the person with profound classical autism. (more...)
Recently featured: Titanium – Labour economics – Paul Charles Morphy
April 18
The Ford Mustang is a popular compact car originally based on the Ford Falcon. It was later introduced to the North American public as a "1964 1/2" model both at the New York World's Fair and later via all three American television networks. It was the most successful product launch in automotive history, setting off near-pandemonium at Ford dealers across the continent. (more...)
Recently featured: Asperger's syndrome – Titanium – Labour economics
April 19
Trench warfare is a form of war in which both opposing armies have static lines of fortifications dug into the ground, facing each other. Trench warfare arose when there was a revolution in firepower without similar advances in mobility and communications. Whilst periods of trench warfare occurred during the American Civil War and the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905, it reached a peak of brutality and bloodshed on the Western Front in the First World War. (more...)
Recently featured: Ford Mustang – Asperger's syndrome – Titanium
April 20
The Congo Free State was a private colony owned by Léopold II of Belgium between about 1877 and 1908. It included the entire area now known as the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and was the scene of native heartbreak and European brutality, greed and genocide on a colossal scale. In 1908, after Léopold's activities had finally been exposed in the Western press, it became, at least in theory, an orthodox colony of Belgium, and known as the Belgian Congo. (more...)
Recently featured: Trench warfare – Ford Mustang – Asperger's syndrome
April 21
James Bulger was a toddler who was abducted and murdered by two ten year-old boys, Jon Venables and Robert Thompson, on Merseyside, in the United Kingdom. The murder of a child by two other children caused an immense public outpouring of shock, outrage and grief, particularly in Liverpool and surrounding towns. At the boys' trial in November 1993 they received a minimum term of eight years detention. (more...)
Recently featured: Congo Free State – Trench warfare – Ford Mustang
April 22
The art of ancient Greece has exercised an enormous influence on the culture of many countries from ancient times until the present, particularly in sculpture and architecture. In the West, the art of the Roman Empire was largely derived from Greek models. In the East, Alexander the Great's conquests initiated several centuries of exchange between Greek, Central Asian and Indian cultures, resulting in Greco-Buddhist art, with ramifications as far as Japan. (more...)
Recently featured: James Bulger – Congo Free State – Trench warfare
April 23
DOOM is a first-person shooter computer game, developed by id Software and first released for the PC on December 10, 1993, later ported to various platforms and followed by two sequels and numerous expansions. DOOM was remarkable for its, by the standards of 1993, realistic 3D graphics. An important evolutionary step from Wolfenstein 3D (id Software's previous game and the first major first-person shooter), DOOM became a genre-defining title. In the light of its popularity, a surge of similar games followed during the mid-1990s. (more...)
Recently featured: Art of ancient Greece – James Bulger – Congo Free State
April 24
Hinduism is the oldest of the major world religions and first among Dharma faiths. Hinduism has a diverse array of belief systems, practices and scriptures. It has its origin in Vedic culture at least as far back as 2000 BCE. It is the third largest religion with approximately 1.05 billion followers worldwide, 96% of whom live in the Indian subcontinent. (more...)
Recently featured: DOOM – Art of ancient Greece – James Bulger
April 25
Assassin has come to mean someone who kills people selectively, usually for ideological or political reasons. The immediate motivation for an assassin may be money (in the case of a hit man), opposition to a person's beliefs or belief systems (in the case of a fanatic, for example), orders from a government (often carried about by a subversive agent such as a spy), or loyalty to a competing leader or group. Assassin, like companion terms such as terrorist and freedom fighter, are often considered to be loaded terms; however, the definition of assassin is clearer than others and most assassins appear, publicly, comfortable enough with their deed to describe it as such, whereas few would call themselves a terrorist. (more...)
Recently featured: Hinduism – DOOM – Art of ancient Greece
April 26
The 2004 Taiwanese presidential election was held on March 20, 2004. President Chen Shui-bian and Vice President Annette Lu of the Democratic Progressive Party were re-elected by a margin of less than 0.25% of valid votes over a combined opposition ticket of Nationalist Party Chairman Lien Chan and People First Party Chairman James Soong. Lien and Soong refused to concede and unsuccessfully challenged the results. (more...)
Recently featured: Assassin – Hinduism – DOOM
April 27
The postal system is a system for transporting objects, usually written documents typically enclosed in envelopes and also small packages containing other matter, around the world. Anything sent through the postal system is called mail or post. In principle, a postal service can be private or official. Restrictions are generally placed on private systems by governments. Since the 19th century, national postal systems have generally been established as government monopolies with postage (tax) on the article prepaid, often in the form of stamps. (more...)
Recently featured: 2004 Taiwanese presidential election – Assassin – Hinduism
April 28
A beer is any of a variety of alcoholic beverages produced by the fermentation of starchy material derived from grains or other plant sources. The production of beer and some other alcoholic beverages is often called brewing. Historically, beer was known to the Sumerians, Egyptians, and Mesopotamians, and dates back at least as far as 4,000 BC. Because the ingredients used to make beer differ from place to place, beer characteristics (type, taste, and color) vary widely. (more...)
Recently featured: postal system – 2004 Taiwanese presidential election – Assassin
April 29
Carlsbad Caverns National Park is a US National Park established to preserve Carlsbad Cavern and numerous other caves within a Permian-age fossil reef. Carlsbad Cavern, with one of the world's largest underground chambers and countless formations, is highly accessible, with both self-guided and a variety of ranger-guided tours offered year round. (more...)
Recently featured: Beer – Postal system – 2004 Taiwanese presidential election
April 30
A space elevator is a hypothetical elevator that connects the surface of a planet with space. It would permit sending objects and astronauts to space at costs only a fraction of those associated with current means. Constructing one would, however, be a vast project, and the elevator would have to be built of a material that could endure tremendous stress while also being light-weight, cheap, and easy to manufacture. Today's technology does not meet these requirements without an unreasonable cost associated with construction, but optimists hold that the space elevator might become a reality in the near future. (more...)
Recently featured: Carlsbad Caverns National Park – Beer – Postal system