Wikipedia:Main Page history/2013 November 11

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John Treloar

John Treloar (1894–1952) was an Australian archivist who was the director for almost 30 years of the Australian War Memorial (AWM), the country's national memorial to the members of its armed forces and supporting organisations who have participated in war. Prior to World War I he worked as a clerk in the Department of Defence and, after volunteering for the First Australian Imperial Force (AIF) in 1914, served in staff roles for most of the war's first years. Treloar was selected to command the Australian War Records Section in 1917. In this position, he improved the AIF's records and collected a large number of artefacts for later display in Australia. Treloar was appointed the director of what eventually became the AWM in 1920, and was a key figure in establishing the Memorial and raising funds for its permanent building in Canberra. He headed the Department of Information during the first years of World War II, and spent the remainder of the war in charge of the Australian military's history section. Treloar returned to the AWM in 1946, and continued as its director until his death. (Full article...)

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November 11: Armistice Day in Belgium, France, New Zealand and Serbia; Remembrance Day in the Commonwealth; Independence Day in Angola (1975) and Poland (1918); Veterans Day in the United States

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From today's featured list

Still from a black and white film: two men look off to the left of the camera

A series of fourteen films based on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories were released between 1939 and 1946. The roles of Holmes and Dr. John Watson were played by Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce, respectively. The first two films were both released in 1939 through 20th Century Fox, which set the films in the Victorian era; the remaining twelve were produced by Universal Studios, which updated the stories to have Holmes investigating the Nazis. Universal also changed the production value of the films, lowering them to produce B pictures with lower budgets. Rathbone and Bruce continued their roles despite the switch in studio. In the 1970s four of the Universal Studios' films fell into the public domain; these were subsequently restored and colourised. Although the two 20th Century Fox films had survived complete and in good condition, those in the Universal series suffered badly over the years, with the unstable cellulose nitrate film found to be suffering from deterioration. In 1993 the UCLA Film and Television Archive started a restoration process on the entire series, with the costs met by UCLA, Warner Bros. and Hugh Hefner. (Full list...)

Today's featured picture

The Crucified Soldier

The Crucified Soldier is a widespread story of an Allied soldier serving in the Canadian Corps who may have been crucified with bayonets on a barn door or tree while fighting on the Western Front during World War I. Three witnesses said they saw an unidentified crucified Canadian soldier near the battlefield of Ypres, Belgium, on or around 24 April 1915, but there was no conclusive proof such a crucifixion actually occurred. This poster, published in the Philippines in 1917, uses the story to sell liberty bonds to support the US war effort.

Poster: Fernando Amorsolo; Restoration: Chris Woodrich

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