Category: Wikipedia

Wikipedia article of the day for January 21, 2024

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Wikipedia article of the day is Never Forget You (Mariah Carey song). Check it out: Article-Link Summary: “Never Forget You” is a song recorded by American singer Mariah Carey (pictured) for her third studio album Music Box. Carey co-wrote the slow jam with Babyface and the pair produced it with Daryl Simmons. Columbia Records released the song on January 21, 1994, as the B-side to “Without You” and promoted it to American urban contemporary radio stations as the album’s fourth single. The lyrics lament the end of a romance. Strings, synthesizers, and percussion characterize the composition; Jermaine Dupri altered them for remixes. Music critics deemed “Never Forget You” unremarkable and derivative. The song peaked at numbers one and three on the US urban contemporary radio charts published by Radio & Records and the Gavin Report, respectively. It also reached number three on the Billboard Hot 100 and number seven on the Billboard Hot R&B Singles chart. Combined with “Without You”, the single sold 600,000 copies in the US throughout 1994.

Wikipedia article of the day for January 20, 2024

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Wikipedia article of the day is Theodore II Laskaris. Check it out: Article-Link Summary: Theodore II Laskaris (1221/1222–1258) was a Byzantine emperor who ruled the Empire of Nicaea from 1254 until his death. Nicaea was a successor state to the Byzantine Empire, after crusaders captured the Byzantine capital, Constantinople, in 1204 during the Fourth Crusade. Theodore began to write treatises on theological, historical and philosophical themes in his youth. From around 1242, he was co-ruler with his father, and his relationship with some prominent aristocrats grew tense. Succeeding his father in 1254 Theodore replaced many aristocratic officials and generals with loyalists, including some of low birth. In 1256, he repelled a Bulgarian invasion of Thrace and Macedonia and forced Epirus to cede Dyrrachium on the Adriatic Sea. Epirus allied with Serbia and Sicily, and jointly invaded Nicaea in 1257; Nicaea’s new generals could not resist the invasion. Theodore died in 1258, leaving an underage son, John IV. Michael Palaiologos seized the regency, and usurped the throne soon after.

Wikipedia article of the day for January 19, 2024

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Wikipedia article of the day is Homeworld. Check it out: Article-Link Summary: Homeworld is a real-time strategy video game developed by Relic Entertainment and published by Sierra Studios (co-founder pictured) in 1999 for Microsoft Windows. The science fiction game follows exiles on a spacecraft-constructing mothership who aim to reclaim their ancient homeworld, encountering pirates, mercenaries, traders, and rebels along the way. The player’s fleet carries over between levels, and can travel in a fully three-dimensional space. Alex Garden of Relic served as the game’s director, and Luke Moloney was lead programmer. Metacritic lists Homeworld as the highest rated computer game of 1999 and the third-highest on any platform for the year, although critical opinions were divided on its plot and high difficulty. The game sold over 500,000 copies in its first six months, and received several awards and nominations for best strategy game of the year and best game of the year. Gearbox Software purchased the game rights in 2013 and released a remastered collection in 2015.

Wikipedia article of the day for January 18, 2024

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Wikipedia article of the day is Mark Baldwin (baseball). Check it out: Article-Link Summary: Mark Baldwin (1863–1929) was an American right-handed professional baseball pitcher who played seven seasons in Major League Baseball (MLB). Born in Pittsburgh, Baldwin made his professional debut for a Cumberland, Maryland, team in 1883. He made his MLB debut for the Chicago White Stockings in 1887. Baldwin signed with the Columbus Solons of the American Association in 1889, and led the league in innings pitched (513+2⁄3), losses (34), strikeouts (368), and walks (274). In 1890, he played for the Chicago Pirates of the Players’ League and was the league leader in games played as a pitcher (58), innings pitched (492), wins (33), strikeouts (206), complete games (53), and walks (249). He later played for the Pittsburgh Pirates and New York Giants, then went on to a career as a physician. In 346 career MLB games, he pitched to a 154–165 win–loss record with 295 complete games. Baldwin set the single-season MLB wild pitches record with 83 that still stands today.

Wikipedia article of the day for January 17, 2024

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Wikipedia article of the day is Handel’s lost Hamburg operas. Check it out: Article-Link Summary: The music for three of the four operas written by the youthful composer George Frideric Handel (pictured) between 1703 and 1706, when he lived in the German city of Hamburg, is lost apart from a few orchestral fragments. Only the first, Almira, has survived complete. He was able to get Almira and the less successful Nero performed at Oper am Gänsemarkt, the opera house, during the temporary absence of the theatre’s director, Reinhard Keiser. Handel’s last two Hamburg operas, Florindo and Daphne, were not produced before Handel left the city. No music that can be definitively traced to Nero has been identified, although some of it may have been used in later works, particularly Agrippina, which has a similar plot and characters. Fragments of music from Florindo and Daphne have been preserved without the vocal parts, and some of these elements were incorporated into an orchestral suite first recorded in 2012.

Wikipedia article of the day for January 16, 2024

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Wikipedia article of the day is Adamson Tannehill. Check it out: Article-Link Summary: Adamson Tannehill (1750–1820) was an American military officer, politician, civic leader, and farmer. Born in Maryland, Tannehill was among the first to join the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War, becoming commander of the Maryland and Virginia Rifle Regiment. He then settled in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where he was active in the state militia, rising to the rank of major general in 1811. He also served as a brigadier general of United States Volunteers in the War of 1812. Tannehill held several local, state, and national offices, including one term as a Democratic-Republican in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1813 to 1815. He was president of the Pittsburgh branch of the Bank of the United States from 1817 until his death. He also served on the founding boards of several civic and state organizations. Tannehill died in 1820 and was buried at his Grove Hill home outside Pittsburgh. He was later reinterred in Allegheny Cemetery (gravestone pictured).

Wikipedia article of the day for January 15, 2024

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Wikipedia article of the day is WWJ-TV. Check it out: Article-Link Summary: WWJ-TV (channel 62) is a television station broadcasting in Detroit, Michigan, United States. It is owned and operated by the CBS News and Stations group, with studios in the suburb of Southfield. Channel 62 was founded as WGPR-TV in 1975 by William V. Banks as the first Black-owned television station in the continental United States. It produced its own shows and helped launch the careers of Black television hosts and executives such as Pat Harvey, Shaun Robinson, Sharon Dahlonega Bush, and Amyre Makupson. In 1994, when a major affiliation switch threatened to leave CBS without an affiliate station in Detroit, the network moved to buy WGPR-TV and dropped the existing programming in favor of CBS and syndicated programs, later changing the call letters to WWJ-TV. The station’s original studios (pictured) are listed on the National Register of Historic Places and preserved as a museum that opened on Martin Luther King Jr. Day in January 2017. A full news department began operation in January 2023.

Wikipedia article of the day for January 14, 2024

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Wikipedia article of the day is Fleetwood Park Racetrack. Check it out: Article-Link Summary: Fleetwood Park was a 19th-century American harness racing track in the Bronx, New York City. The races were a popular form of entertainment, drawing crowds as large as 10,000. The one-mile (1.6 km) course described an unusual shape, with four turns in one direction and one in the other. For the last five years of operation, Fleetwood was part of trotting’s Grand Circuit, one travel guide calling it “the most famous trotting track in the country”. The track operated under several managements between 1870 and 1898, most notably the New York Driving Club, consisting of many wealthy New York businessmen, including members of the Vanderbilt and Rockefeller families as well as former US president Ulysses S. Grant and Robert Bonner, owner of the New York Ledger. Economic pressures forced the track to close in 1898, and within two years the property was being subdivided into residential building lots. The meandering route of modern 167th Street runs along a portion of the old racecourse.

Wikipedia article of the day for January 13, 2024

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Wikipedia article of the day is Carucage. Check it out: Article-Link Summary: Carucage was a medieval English land tax based on the size of the taxpayer’s estate. It was levied six times: by Richard I in 1194 and 1198, John in 1200, and Henry III in 1217, 1220, and 1224. The taxable value of an estate was initially assessed from the Domesday Book survey, but other methods were later employed, such as valuations based on the sworn testimony of neighbours or the number of plough-teams (example depicted) the taxpayer used. Carucage never raised as much as other taxes, but it helped fund the ransom for Richard’s release in 1194, the tax John paid to Philip II of France on land he inherited in that country, and the cost of Henry III’s military campaigns in England and continental Europe. The tax was an attempt to secure new sources of revenue when new demands were being made on royal finances. Unlike the older danegeld tax, carucage was an experiment in revenue collection and only levied for specific purposes.

Wikipedia article of the day for January 12, 2024

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Wikipedia article of the day is SMS Prinz Adalbert (1901). Check it out: Article-Link Summary: SMS Prinz Adalbert was an armored cruiser built in the early 1900s for the German Kaiserliche Marine, and was named after Prince Adalbert of Prussia, the former commander-in-chief of the Prussian Navy. Her class included a second ship, Friedrich Carl. Prinz Adalbert was built at the Imperial Dockyard in Kiel. Her keel was laid in April 1900 and she was commissioned on 12 January 1904. She served as a gunnery training ship and made several visits to foreign countries. After the outbreak of World War I in July 1914 she served in the Baltic Sea, and after her sister ship was sunk in November 1914, she became the flagship of a cruiser squadron in the Baltic, conducting operations against Russian forces. She was torpedoed twice by British submarines in 1915. On the second occasion she sank quickly with heavy loss of life; from a crew of 675 men, only 3 were rescued. This was the worst German naval disaster in the Baltic during the war. (This article is part of a featured topic: Armored cruisers of Germany.)