Wikipedia:Main Page history/2020 December 22b

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From today's featured article

Meghan Trainor (born December 22, 1993) is an American singer-songwriter and talent show judge. Her 2014 debut single "All About That Bass" reached number one on the US Billboard Hot 100 chart and sold 11 million copies worldwide. She won the 2016 Grammy Award for Best New Artist. Trainor has released three studio albums with Epic Records. In 2015, her pop and hip hop album, Title, included the top-10 singles "Lips Are Movin" and "Like I'm Gonna Lose You". It debuted at number one on the US Billboard 200. The single "No" led her R&B album Thank You (2016); both the song and the album reached number three on the respective charts. Trainor has had voice roles in the animated films Smurfs: The Lost Village (2017) and Playmobil: The Movie (2019), and has served as a judge on the television talent shows The Four: Battle for Stardom (2018) and The Voice UK (2020). She has won four ASCAP Pop Music Awards and two Billboard Music Awards. (This article is part of a featured topic: Overview of Meghan Trainor.)

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Did you know ...

Nadia Fink

... that picture books in the Anti-Princess Series by Argentine writer Nadia Fink (pictured) define words like "dictatorship", "surrealism", and "revolution"?
... that the London Theatre Studio was the first English drama school to teach theatrical design as well as drama?
... that Thomas J. White estimated that he gave more than $75 million to charity after resolving "to die as close to penniless as possible"?
... that the Royal Pioneer Corps could build a Twynham hut in four minutes?
... that In Praise of Forgetting makes the case against collective memory: "whereas forgetting does an injustice to the past, remembering does an injustice to the present"?
... that Charles Green was probably the youngest Australian Army infantry battalion commander during World War II?
... that the Arlington Hotel, rebuilt after a devastating fire, was severely damaged in the 1925 Santa Barbara earthquake?
... that The European said of George Saxby Penfold's sermons that "they are distinguished by a pleasing mediocrity"?

In the news

COVID-19 pandemic: Disease; Virus; By location; Impact; Vaccines; Portal

Chang'e 5

The closest great conjunction between Jupiter and Saturn since 1623 occurs.
The Chang'e 5 (illustration shown) sample-return mission returns lunar material to Earth.
Nana Akufo-Addo is re-elected for a second term as President of Ghana.
In motorsport, Sébastien Ogier and Julien Ingrassia win the World Rally Championship, while Hyundai win the manufacturers' title.

On this day

December 22

President Obama signing the Don't Ask, Don't Tell Repeal Act

856 – An earthquake registering an estimated 7.9 M_s struck the eastern Alborz mountains in Persia, causing an estimated 200,000 deaths.
1769 – Defeated by the Burmese Konbaung dynasty, Qing China agreed to a peace treaty to end the Sino-Burmese War.
1920 – The Congress of Soviets approved the GOELRO plan, the first Soviet plan for national economic recovery and development.
2010 – The United States repealed its controversial "don't ask, don't tell" policy on gay, lesbian and bisexual people in the military (signing pictured).

Étienne Martellange (b. 1569)
Jean-Victor Poncelet (d. 1867)
Alan Bush (b. 1900)

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Today's featured picture

Haydée is an opéra comique by the French composer Daniel Auber, first performed by the Théâtre Royal de l'Opéra-Comique at the Salle Favart in Paris on 28 December 1847. The libretto, based on a short story by Prosper Mérimée, was written by Eugène Scribe. The plot is set during the 16th-century wars between the Republic of Venice and the Ottoman Empire, and involves a naval commander with a guilty secret, his ward, his slave girl, a handsome captain and a villainous spy. After much confusion and intrigue, everything ends happily for the main protagonists. This illustration shows Philippe Chaperon's set design for the second act of an 1891 Opéra-Comique performance of Haydée at the Théâtre de la Ville in Paris.

Set design and illustration credit: Philippe Chaperon; restored by Adam Cuerden

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