Wikipedia article of the day for November 14, 2020

The Wikipedia article of the day for November 14, 2020 is Project Excalibur.
Project Excalibur was an American Cold War–era research program to develop nuclear-device-powered, space-based X-ray lasers as a ballistic missile defense. X-ray lasers were conceived in the 1970s by George Chapline Jr. (pictured with George Maenchen) and further developed by Peter L. Hagelstein, both working at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory under Edward Teller. After a promising test, Teller discussed the proposal in 1981 with US president Ronald Reagan, who in 1983 incorporated it in his Strategic Defense Initiative. Further underground nuclear tests suggested progress was being made. Reagan refused to abandon the technology at the 1986 Reykjavík Summit arms-control talks, even after a critical test demonstrated it was not working as expected. Researchers at Livermore and Los Alamos began to raise concerns about test results, and the infighting became public. In 1988 the program budget was cut dramatically, after additional problems were revealed.

Wikipedia article of the day for November 13, 2020

The Wikipedia article of the day for November 13, 2020 is Edward Thomas Daniell.
Edward Thomas Daniell was an English artist known for etchings and Middle Eastern landscape paintings. Taught by John Crome and Joseph Stannard, he is associated with the Norwich School of painters, who were mainly inspired by the Norfolk countryside. After graduating in classics at Balliol College, Oxford, in 1828, he was ordained as a curate in 1832 and appointed to a curacy in London in 1834. He became a patron of the arts, and a friend of the artist John Linnell. In 1840, after resigning his curacy and leaving for the Middle East, he encountered the archaeological expedition of Charles Fellows in Lycia, and joined as their illustrator. He contracted malaria and died from a second attack of the disease. He normally used a small number of colours for his watercolour paintings; his distinctive style was influenced in part by Crome, J. M. W. Turner and John Sell Cotman. As an etcher he anticipated the modern revival of etching that began in the 1850s.

Wikipedia article of the day for November 12, 2020

The Wikipedia article of the day for November 12, 2020 is St. Croix macaw.
The St. Croix macaw (Ara autocthones) is an extinct species of macaw whose remains have been found on the Caribbean islands of St. Croix and Puerto Rico. It was a medium-sized macaw of unknown coloration, slightly larger than the extinct Cuban macaw. It was described in 1937 based on a tibiotarsus leg bone (pictured) unearthed from a kitchen midden at a pre-Columbian site on St. Croix. A second specimen consisting of various bones from a similar site on Puerto Rico was described in 2008, and a coracoid from Montserrat may belong to this or another extinct species of macaw. The St. Croix macaw is one of 13 extinct macaw species that have been proposed to have lived on the Caribbean islands. Macaws were frequently transported for long distances by humans in both prehistoric and historic times, so it is impossible to know whether species only known from bones or written accounts were native or imported species.

Wikipedia article of the day for November 11, 2020

The Wikipedia article of the day for November 11, 2020 is Fabian Ware.
Sir Fabian Ware (1869–1949) was a British journalist and the founder of the Imperial War Graves Commission (IWGC), now the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. He travelled to the Transvaal Colony where he became Director of Education in 1903. Two years later he became editor of The Morning Post. He expanded the paper but was forced to retire in 1911. When the First World War started, Ware was appointed commander of a mobile ambulance unit and began marking and recording the graves of those killed. In 1916 the Department of Graves Registration and Enquiries was created with Ware at its head. On 21 May 1917 the IWGC was founded; Ware served as its vice-chairman. He ended the war as a major-general, having been mentioned in despatches twice. Post-war, Ware was heavily involved in the IWGC's function. When the Second World War broke out, he continued to serve as vice-chairman of the IWGC and was re-appointed director-general of Graves Registration and Enquiries.

Wikipedia article of the day for November 10, 2020

The Wikipedia article of the day for November 10, 2020 is Episode 14 (Twin Peaks).
"Episode 14" is the seventh episode of the second season of the American mystery television series Twin Peaks. Featuring Kyle MacLachlan, Michael Ontkean, Ray Wise (pictured) and Richard Beymer, it centers on an investigation into the murder of Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee) in a rural town in Washington state. In this episode, FBI special agent Dale Cooper (MacLachlan) and Sheriff Truman (Ontkean) continue to search for Laura's killer. Cooper and Truman arrest Benjamin Horne (Beymer), believing him to be possessed by a demon, but later that night the demon's real host, Leland Palmer (Wise), murders Madeline Ferguson (Lee). "Episode 14" was first broadcast on November 10, 1990, by the American Broadcasting Company (ABC) and was watched by an audience of 17.2 million households. The episode was well-received. Academic readings of the entry have highlighted the theme of duality and the cinematography in the revelation scene.

Wikipedia article of the day for November 9, 2020

The Wikipedia article of the day for November 9, 2020 is Japanese battleship Yashima.
Yashima was a Fuji-class pre-dreadnought battleship built for the Imperial Japanese Navy in the 1890s. Yashima (a classical name for Japan) was designed and built in the United Kingdom, as Japan lacked the necessary industrial capacity. Her main battery consisted of four 12-inch (305 mm) guns. Commanded by Captain Hajime Sakamoto at the start of the Russo-Japanese War, the ship participated in the Battle of Port Arthur on 9 February 1904 when Vice-Admiral Tōgō Heihachirō led his battleships and cruisers in an attack on Russia's Pacific Squadron. Yashima was involved in war operations until May, when she struck two mines off Port Arthur. She did not sink immediately, but capsized while under tow later that day. The Japanese were able to keep her loss a secret from the Russians for over a year; as part of the deception, surviving crewmen who were guarding Port Arthur addressed their letters as if they were still aboard the battleship.