Wikipedia:Main Page history/2018 December 20

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From today's featured article

The Devon County War Memorial is a First World War memorial on Cathedral Green in Exeter, the county town of Devon, in the south west of England. It is one of fifteen War Crosses designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens to a similar specification. The Devon County War Memorial Committee commissioned Lutyens to design a War Cross and chose to site it at Exeter Cathedral. Hewn from a single block of granite quarried from Haytor on Dartmoor, it stands just to the west of the cathedral, in alignment with the altar. The cross stands on a granite plinth, which itself sits on three steps. After archaeological excavations in the 1970s, the area was remodelled to create a processional way between the memorial and the cathedral. The memorial is a grade II* listed building and is included in a national collection of Lutyens' war memorials. It commemorates the war dead of the county of Devon; the Exeter City War Memorial in Northernhay Gardens honours those from the city. (Full article...)

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Did you know...

Natwest Tower

... that Roger Norman Sainsbury was named a joint winner of Construction News "man of the year" award in 1979 for his work on the Natwest Tower (pictured)?
... that the Pasadena orogeny was responsible for uplifting many mountain ranges in Southern California and might be still underway?
... that Rabbi Michael Robinson and 15 other Reform rabbis were arrested and jailed after answering Martin Luther King's call to stand with him for civil rights in St. Augustine, Florida?
... that the specific name of Hydrolagus homonycteris refers to a professor at Illinois Wesleyan University known as "bat man" by his students?
... that at age 62, Alice Harrell Strickland was elected the first woman mayor in the U.S. state of Georgia on a platform to rid her town of "demon rum"?
... that as an ally of the Mamluk Sultanate, the Kingdom of al-Abwab provided an Assassin to watch over the Mamluk puppet king in Dongola?
... that Karabo Mathang-Tshabuse is South Africa's first female FIFA-accredited soccer agent?
... that in 2015, the Edinburgh City Council sold Bridgend Farmhouse and its land for £1 despite receiving another offer of £215,000?

In the news

The Balangiga bells

In field hockey, the World Cup concludes with Belgium defeating the Netherlands in the final.
The Balangiga bells (pictured), taken by US Army soldiers from the Philippines in 1901 as war trophies, are repatriated.
Nine people are killed when a high-speed train collides with a locomotive in Ankara, Turkey.
Two days after a shooting at the Christmas market in Strasbourg, France, in which five people died, French police kill the suspected perpetrator.

On this day

December 20

Cardiff City Hall

1860 – South Carolina became the first of eleven slave states to secede from the United States, leading to the eventual creation of the Confederate States of America and later the American Civil War.
1955 – Cardiff (City Hall pictured) was recognised as the capital of Wales.
1968 – The Zodiac Killer murdered the first of his five confirmed victims in Vallejo, California, a case which remains unsolved.
1988 – The United Nations Convention Against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances governing international cooperation against the illegal drug trade was signed in Vienna.
2007 – Pablo Picasso's Portrait of Suzanne Bloch was stolen from the São Paulo Museum of Art and recovered about three weeks later.

Ambroise Paré (d. 1590) · Bill "Tiger" O'Reilly (b. 1905) · Beth Doe (d. 1976)

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Today's featured picture

The Church of St. Augustine and St. John, commonly known as John's Lane Church, is a large Roman Catholic church located on Thomas Street in Dublin, Ireland. It was opened in 1874 on the site of the medieval St. John's Hospital, which was founded in around 1180. John's Lane Church is served by the Augustinian Order.

This picture shows the exterior of the church.

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