Wikipedia:Main Page history/2019 December 19

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From today's featured article

It Is the Law is a 1924 American silent mystery film directed by J. Gordon Edwards and starring Arthur Hohl, Herbert Heyes, and Mona Palma. It is a film adaptation of the 1922 Broadway play of the same name by Elmer Rice. The film depicts the story of Ruth Allen (Palma), who marries Justin Victor (Heyes) instead of competing suitor Albert Woodruff (Hohl). Seeking revenge, Woodruff fakes his death by killing a drifter who resembles him, and frames Victor for the murder. After Victor goes to prison, Woodruff renews his courtship of Allen using an assumed identity, but she sees through his disguise. When Victor gets out of prison, he kills Woodruff, and goes free because he cannot be convicted twice for the same crime. This was the final film for director Edwards and was one of the last motion pictures produced at Fox Film's New York studio. Like many of Fox's early works, it was probably lost in the 1937 Fox vault fire. (Full article...)

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In the news

Donald Trump

United States president Donald Trump (pictured) is impeached by the House of Representatives on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.
Former Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf is sentenced to death in absentia for treason and subverting the constitution.
In India, at least six people are killed and many others are arrested in protests against a law on citizenship for migrants.
The Conservatives, led by Boris Johnson, win a majority of seats in the UK general election.

On this day

December 19

Thomas Paine

1154 – Henry II was crowned king of England in Westminster Abbey, London.
1776 – Thomas Paine (portrait shown) published the first in a series of pamphlets entitled The American Crisis, opening with the line: "These are the times that try men's souls."
1941 – Second World War: six Italian Royal Navy divers on manned torpedoes detonated limpet mines, disabling four vessels, including two Royal Navy battleships.
1984 – China and the United Kingdom signed the Sino-British Joint Declaration, agreeing to the transfer of sovereignty of Hong Kong to China on 1 July 1997.
2013 – The European Space Agency's Gaia space observatory was launched, with the goal of constructing the largest and most precise star catalogue ever made.

Pope Urban V (d. 1370) · Grace Marie Bareis (b. 1875) · Stella Gibbons (d. 1989)

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Today's featured picture

Minnie Maddern Fiske (December 19, 1865 – February 15, 1932) was an American actress, producer, director and playwright. She started her acting career at the age of three, was taking on leading roles at sixteen, and was widely considered the most important actress on the American stage in the first quarter of the 20th century. She married the journalist and newspaper owner Harrison Grey Fiske in March 1890, and he directed almost all her plays thereafter.

This picture shows Fiske in 1896 in the leading role of Love Finds the Way, which opened on Broadway on April 11, 1898. She played an unhappy young woman, alienated from her family, who sought romance.

Photograph credit: Zaida Ben-Yusuf; restored by Adam Cuerden

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