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Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2015-03-04/Featured content

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Featured content

Ploughing fields and trading horses with Rosa Bonheur

The Horse Fair by Rosa Bonheur. Bonheur is most famous for two chief works: Ploughing in the Nivernais (see below), and The Horse Fair (see above), and both became featured pictures in the same week!
This Signpost "Featured content" report covers material promoted from 15 to 21 February 2015. Text may be adapted from the respective articles and lists; see their page histories for attribution.

Featured articles

Two featured articles were promoted this week.

  • Keen Johnson (nominated by Acdixon) Part of the nominator's long series of articles on Kentucky governors, Johnson edited several newspapers before running for lieutenant governor in the 1930s. In 1939, the governor resigned so that Johnson would appoint him to a Senate seat; Johnson won the subsequent election and governed Kentucky during the opening years of the Second World War. His later political career included a short stint as the first Undersecretary of Labor and an unsuccessful run for the US Senate in 1960. He died ten years later.
  • Horace Greeley (nominated by Wehwalt) One of Wikipedia's vital articles, Greeley was the editor of the New York Tribune, which under his leadership became the highest circulating newspaper in the United States. In the decade before the American Civil War, the Tribune became a major force in politics and had a non-trivial role in helping Abraham Lincoln get elected. Greeley himself helped found the Republican Party and eventually ran for president in 1872, where he lost badly to former army general Ulysses S. Grant. Greeley died three weeks later, at which time Harper's Weekly wrote "Since the assassination of Mr. Lincoln, the death of no American has been so sincerely deplored as that of Horace Greeley; and its tragical circumstances have given a peculiarly affectionate pathos to all that has been said of him."
Evening sunset in Toledo, Spain.

Featured lists

Four featured lists were promoted this week.

Jamie Foxx won the Academy Award for Best Actor in the 77th Academy Awards for his portrayal of Ray Charles in the film Ray.

Featured pictures

Thirty-eight featured pictures were promoted this week.

"Let the Private Space Race Begin": The final takeoff from the Mojave Spaceport of SpaceShipOne took place at 06:49am on 4 October 2004. Photographed by WPPilot
In a pine wood. Study by Christen Dalsgaard, Hirschsprung Collection
Marriage à-la-mode: 2. The Tête à Tête by William Hogarth
Nave of St Cyprian's Church, Clarence Gate, London.
Equestrian portrait of Charles I by Anthony van Dyck
House of Blackheads in Riga, Latvia, at dusk.
Vaxholm Fortress, photographed by Arild Vågen in November 2013
The hospital at Scutari, where Florence Nightingale revitalized both the hospital and the entire field of nursing.

Confiteantur tibi, Domine, omnia opera tua,
:et sancti tui benedicant te.
:Agimus tibi gratias, omnipotens Deus,
:pro universis beneficiis tuis,
:qui vivis et regnas Deus per omnia saecula saeculorum.

  • Lindau Lighthouse (created Taxiarchos228 and nominated by Crisco 1492) The Lindau Lighthouse was built from 1853 to 1856 and has a clock in its façade. This lighthouse is the southernmost lighthouse in Germany, located in Lindau on Lake Constance. Nowadays the light is lit on demand by ships using radio signals. It is open to visitors and it is a popular subject for photographs, though most probably aren't as good as this one.
  • SpaceShipOne takeoff (nominated and created by D. Ramey Logan) SpaceShipOne flight 17P was a spaceflight in the Tier One program that took place on October 4, 2004. The White Knight, a carrier aircraft, took SpaceShipOne to the launch altitude, in excess of 43,500 feet (13.3 km). SpaceShipOne separated from White Knight at 07:49 and promptly ignited its rocket. The rocket motor was capable of burning for approximately 87 s. The burn-out altitude was in excess of 200,000 feet (61 km). After burn-out, the craft continued to coast upwards. The wing was feathered into high-drag configuration during the coasting phase. The spacecraft coasted to apogee at an altitude of 367,442 feet. The SpaceShipOne pilot was Brian Binnie, while White Knight was piloted by Mike Melvill. It was the second competitive flight in the Ansari X Prize competition to demonstrate a non-governmental reusable manned spacecraft, and is hence also referred to as the X2 flight. To win the X Prize, a spacecraft needed to make two successful competitive flights within a fortnight. SpaceShipOne made a successful competitive flight on September 29, 2004, and so needed to make a second by October 13, 2004 in order to win. It was a successful flight, winning the X Prize. After the launch of the first flight, Mike Melvill approached our own WPPilot and gave him a handful of M&M's he had just taken into space, who promptly ate them and continued shooting photos :) & Still feeling a little spaced out to this day.
  • Thomas Gainsborough (created by Thomas Gainsborough, nominated by Sagaciousphil) A self-portrait of Thomas Gainsborough (1727–1788), a famous English portrait and landscape painter. He lived in Bath and London, where the fashionable society patronised him. He painted the portraits of the king and queen, but the king chose Gainsborough's rival Joshua Reynolds for the position of royal painter. However, in 1769, he became a founding member of the Royal Academy of Arts. Gainsborough is credited, together with Richard Wilson, as the founder of the 18th century British landscape school. Gainsborough had a charming and original style, he painted quickly with vibrant brushstrokes, and caught his subjects on canvas depicting not only their outside but capturing the inside as well (That's how you say "his pictures give some idea of people's personality in their expressions and body language" in the language of art criticism). William Jackson, in his contemporary essays, said of him, "to his intimate friends he was sincere and honest and that his heart was always alive to every feeling of honour and generosity". His portrait and landscapes reflect the strong romantic component in Gainsborough's artistic temperament.
  • Portrait of Pope Julius II (created by Raphael, nominated by SchroCat) An oil painting from 1511, Portrait of Pope Julius II shows the Pope lost in thought. Raphael, through this much-copied portrait of Pope Julius II, set a standard for the painting of future popes. This papal portrait was hung at the pillars of the church of Santa Maria del Popolo on feast and high holy days. Giorgio Vasari, writing long after Julius' death, said that "it was so lifelike and true it frightened everyone who saw it, as if it were the living man himself". Several versions of the painting exist; one has a hanging in the background with a blue and gold textile, either woven silk or embroidery, with gold emblems in tear shaped light blue compartments against a dark blue background. The pope wears here a red velvet high-necked cape covering the neck and shoulders, trimmed with white fur, together with a fashionable red velvet men's cap. Below he wears a white, light, wide and loose silk robe with an especially flattering high waistline, Empire silhouette, with tight sleeves completely covering the wrists, falling loosely below, flowing in graceful folds down, with no buttons or tapes in the front. On his fingers he wears several golden rings with brilliant gemstones. However ... no pearls.
  • William Faulkner (created by Carl Van Vechten, restored and nominated by Adam Cuerden) Carl Van Vechten was a novelist, essayist, and photographer. White and well to do, he was a friend and patron of many of the leading writers and artists of the Harlem Renaissance, such as Langston Hughes. He also took up photography, creating striking portraits of many of the leading artistic figures of the day: writers, actors, dancers, and painters. Many of those photos now accompany Wikipedia articles because the Library of Congress has placed them all online and free of copyright restriction. Here is a 1954 photograph of some obscure regional novelist and failed screenwriter named William Faulkner. Hailing from Oxford, Mississippi, he chronicled the lives of people of the fictional Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi in introspective and experimental novels, capturing spoken vernacular and internal monologues in works like The Sound and the Fury (1929), As I Lay Dying (1930), Light in August (1932), and Absalom, Absalom! (1936) that are now staples of literature curriculums. Faulkner received the 1949 Nobel Prize in Literature, which catapulted him to worldwide fame, something he was decidedly not happy about. He didn't even tell his own daughter, who learned of it from her high school principal.
  • Flowers in a Terracotta Vase (created by Albertus Jonas Brandt and Eelke Jelles Eelkema, nominated by CorinneSD )Flowers in a Terracotta Vase, is a still life painting by a couple of Dutch painters, featuring a great variety of enchanting spring flowers, lilacs, morning glory, peonies, poppies, and honeysuckle among others. The painting was started by Albertus Jonas Brandt and finished by Eelke Jelles Eelkema. The painting is owned by the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.
Ploughing in the Nivernais – Once we started with the cattle, we just can't stop... hey, these are great animals