Wikipedia:Main Page history/2013 December 29

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From today's featured article

Robert Howe (1732–86) was a Continental Army general from North Carolina during the American Revolutionary War. He was one of only five general officers, and the only major general, in the Continental Army from that state. At the outset of the war, he was appointed a brigadier general in the Continental Army, and eventually became commander of the Southern Department. His early military career was contentious and consumed by conflict with political and military leaders in Georgia and South Carolina. These confrontations, including a 1778 duel with Christopher Gadsden, and Howe's reputation as a womanizer eventually led to his removal from command over the Southern Department. Prior to the formal turnover of his command, Howe commanded the Continental Army and Patriot militia forces in defeat in the First Battle of Savannah. He later sat as a senior officer on the court-martial board that sentenced British officer John André, a co-conspirator of Benedict Arnold, to death. Howe himself was accused of attempting to defect to the British, but the accusations were cast aside at the time as a British stratagem. He died in December 1786 after being elected to the North Carolina House of Commons. (Full article...)

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From Wikipedia's new and recently improved content:

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... that Neil Combee was rejected as a candidate for the Florida Senate because his campaign wrote a check that was one cent short?

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In the news

Amidst fears of civil war, the United Nations Security Council agrees to send more UNMISS soldiers to South Sudan.
Pioneering British computer scientist and code breaker Alan Turing, convicted in 1952 of gross indecency for homosexual activity, is granted a posthumous royal pardon.
After the pardoning of businessman Mikhail Khodorkovsky, an amnesty law in Russia leads to the release of thousands of prisoners, including two members of Pussy Riot (Nadezhda Tolokonnikova pictured), and the dropping of charges against participants in a Greenpeace protest.
In handball, the World Women's Championship concludes with Brazil defeating Serbia in the final.
ESA's Gaia space observatory is launched to compile a catalogue of astronomical objects.

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On this day...

December 29: Independence Day in Mongolia (1911)

1860 – To counter the French Navy's La Gloire, the world's first ironclad warship, the British Royal Navy launched the world's first iron-hulled armoured battleship, HMS Warrior.
1890 – The United States Army killed over 150 members of the Great Sioux Nation at the Wounded Knee Massacre.
1911 – Sun Yat-sen was elected in Nanjing as the Provisional President of the Republic of China.
1930 – Muhammad Iqbal (pictured) introduced the two-nation theory outlining a vision for the creation of an independent state for Muslim-majority provinces in northwestern British India.
1992 – President of Brazil Fernando Collor de Mello resigned in an attempt to stop his impeachment proceedings from continuing, but the Senate of Brazil continued anyway, finding him guilty.

More anniversaries: December 28 – December 29 – December 30

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Today's featured picture

Sign painting is the act of taking a specific kind of brush, and with it applying various kinds of paint to a 2- or 3-dimensional surface to make letters, forms or symbols. The occupation has become less common with the advent of computer printing. Here two painters are creating a new sign on the walls of the Figueroa Hotel in Los Angeles, California.

Photo: John O'Neill

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