Wikipedia:Today's featured article/May 2004

Today's featured article archive

May 1

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is a children's story written by L. Frank Baum, illustrated by W.W. Denslow, and first published in 1900. The story chronicles the adventures of a girl named Dorothy in the land of Oz. It is well regarded in popular culture and has been widely translated as the first American fairy tale due to its setting. Its initial success led to Baum writing and publishing thirteen more Oz books. (more...)

Recently featured: space elevator – Carlsbad Caverns National Park – Beer

May 2

The Peerage is a system of titles of nobility in the United Kingdom. Peers include Dukes, Marquesses, Earls, Viscounts and Barons; such titles may be either hereditary or for life. Additionally, certain Archbishops and Bishops of the Church of England are classified by some authorities as Spiritual Peers. Formerly, all peers meeting qualifications such as age could sit in the House of Lords, the Upper House of the British Parliament. Since 1999, however, hereditary peers have not had the automatic right to sit in Parliament. (more...)

Recently featured: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz – Space elevator – Carlsbad Caverns National Park

May 3

Prostitution is the sale of sexual services for money or other kind of return, generally indiscriminately with many persons. A person selling sexual favors is a prostitute, a type of sex worker. Most prostitutes are women offering their services to men. Male customers of prostitutes are known as johns in the United States or punters in the United Kingdom. (more...)

Recently featured: Peerage – The Wonderful Wizard of Oz – Space elevator

May 4

A horizontally-oriented cladogram

Cladistics is a branch of biology that determines the evolutionary relationships between living things based on derived similarity. Cladistics differs from phenetics, which groups organisms based on overall similarity, and from more traditional approaches based on "key characters". Willi Hennig is widely regarded as the founder of cladistics. (more...)

Recently featured: Prostitution – Peerage – The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

May 5

Abraham Lincoln was the 16th President of the United States, and the first President from the Republican Party. He has often been praised for successfully restoring the federal unity of the nation by defeating the secessionist Confederate States of America in the U.S. Civil War and along the way, playing in an important role in ending chattel slavery in the United States. (more...)

Recently featured: Cladistics – Prostitution – Peerage

May 6

There are many different methods of spacecraft propulsion used to change the velocity of spacecraft and artificial satellites. All current spacecraft use chemical rocket engines (bipropellant or solid-fuel) for launch. A few use some sort of electrical engine for stationkeeping. Interplanetary vehicles mostly use chemical rockets as well, although a few have experimentally used ion thrusters with some success. (more...)

Recently featured: Abraham Lincoln – Cladistics – Prostitution

May 7

Batman is a fictional character, a comic book superhero created by Bob Kane and Bill Finger in 1939. He first appeared in the title Detective Comics, and is currently the lead character of a number of comic books published by DC Comics. Batman and Superman are DC Comics' two most popular and recognizable characters. In most versions of the Batman mythos, Batman is the alter-ego of Bruce Wayne, a millionaire industrialist who was driven to fight crime after his parents were murdered by a mugger when he was a child. (more...)

Recently featured: Spacecraft propulsion – Abraham Lincoln – Cladistics

May 8

Thailand is divided into 76 provinces which are grouped into 5 groups. The name of each province is the same as that of its capital city, which is sometimes preceded with a Mueang to avoid confusion with the province. With the exception of Songkhla the capital is also the biggest city in the province. Bangkok has both the greatest population and the highest population density. Each province is administrated by a governor, who is appointed by the Ministry of the Interior. (more...)

Recently featured: Batman – Spacecraft propulsion – Abraham Lincoln

May 9

The European Union is an international organisation of 25 European states, established in 1992. It originates from the Coal and Steel Community, founded in 1951 by Germany, France, Italy and the Benelux countries. However, the French-German politician Robert Schuman presented his proposal of a united Europe, known as the Schuman declaration, already in 1950, which is considered to be the beginning of what is now the European Union. The Union has many activities, the most important being a common single market, consisting of a customs union, a single currency, a Common Agricultural Policy and a Common Fisheries Policy. (more...)

Recently featured: Provinces of Thailand – Batman – Spacecraft propulsion

May 10

Chess is a board game for two players, which requires 32 chesspieces. The board is a great square overall consisting of eight rows (ranks) by eight columns (files) of individual squares which alternate in color orthogonally (traditionally as white and black). Hence, there are a total of 64 individual squares. The object of the game is to put the opponent's king in checkmate. (more...)

Recently featured: European Union – Provinces of Thailand – Batman

May 11

Taiwanese is the home language for about 60 percent of the population of Taiwan. Native speakers of Taiwanese are known as Hō-ló. The language, a tonal one with extremely extensive tone sandhi rules, is similar to the speech of the southern part of Fujian in China. There are special literary and art forms in Taiwanese such as Chhit-jī-á, a poetic meter where each verse has 7 syllables; and koa-a-hì, Taiwanese opera. (more...)

Recently featured: Chess – European Union – Provinces of Thailand

May 12

The Western is one of the classic American film genres. Westerns are arts works (films, books, television shows) devoted to telling romanticized tales of the American West usually involving cowboys and outlaws. The fundamental plots of Westerns are simple. Life is reduced to its elements: there are none of the complications and technology of modern life. You have the clothes on your back, your gun, and possibly a horse. The art of the Western takes these simple elements and uses them to tell simple morality stories, setting them against the spectacular scenery of the American West. (more...)

Recently featured: Taiwanese – Chess – European Union

May 13

A floppy disk is a data storage device that comprises a circular piece of thin, flexible magnetic medium encased in a square or rectangular plastic wallet. The fact that the exterior aspect is neither circular nor floppy confuses some novice users. Floppy disks were ubiquitous in the 1980s and 1990s, being used on home and personal computer platforms such as the Apple II, Macintosh, Commodore 64, and IBM PC to distribute software, transfer data between computers, and create small backups. In March of 2003, Dell made the decision to make floppy drives optional on its higher-end desktop computers, a move hailed by some as the end of the floppy disk as a mainstream means of data storage and exchange. (more...)

Recently featured: Western movie – Taiwanese – Chess

May 14

A triangle is one of the basic shapes of geometry: a two-dimensional figure with three vertices and three sides which are straight line segments. Elementary facts about triangles were presented by Euclid in books 1-4 of his Elements in around 300BC. In Euclidean geometry, the sum of the angles α + β + γ is equal to two right angles (180° or π radians). This allows determination of the third angle of any triangle as soon as two angles are known. (more...)

Recently featured: Floppy disk – Western movie – Taiwanese

May 15

The Montreal Canadiens are a National Hockey League team based in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. With the possible exception of baseball's New York Yankees, no North American sports team has had as storied and as successful a history as the Montreal Canadiens. They have won 24 Stanley Cups, far more than any other team. Before there was an NHL, there were Montreal Canadiens. They became a charter member of the league's forerunner, the National Hockey Association, in 1909. (more...)

Recently featured: Triangle – Floppy disk – Western movie

May 16

The Sino-Soviet split was a conflict between the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China, beginning in the late 1950s, reaching a peak in 1969 and continuing in various ways until the late 1980s. It led to a parallel split in the international Communist movement, although it was as much about Chinese and Soviet national interests as it was about Communist ideology. (more...)

Recently featured: Montreal Canadiens – Triangle – Floppy disk

May 17

Bob Dylan is regarded by some to be America's greatest popular songwriter. Much of his best known work is from the 1960s when his musical shadow was so large that he became a documentarian and reluctant figurehead of American unrest. More broadly, Dylan is credited with expanding the possible vocabulary of popular music, moving it beyond the traditional territory of boy-and-girl into the heady realms of politics, philosophy, and a kind of stream-of-consciousness absurdist humor that defies easy description. (more...)

Recently featured: Sino-Soviet split – Montreal Canadiens – Triangle

May 18

A comet is a relatively small object similar to an asteroid but composed largely of ice. In the Solar System the orbits of comets extend past that of Pluto; of the comets which enter the inner Solar System, most have relatively highly elliptical orbits. Often described as "dirty snowballs", comets are composed largely of frozen carbon dioxide, methane and water with dust and various mineral aggregates mixed in. Comets are thought of as debris leftover from the condensation of a solar nebula. (more...)

Recently featured: Bob Dylan – Sino-Soviet split – Montreal Canadiens

May 19

Buckinghamshire is an administrative county in south central England. It has an area of 727 sq. mi. (1883 km²) and a population of 590,000; its county town is Aylesbury. Buckinghamshire is divided into four districts: Aylesbury Vale, Chiltern, South Bucks and Wycombe. In the local government reform of 1974, Buckinghamshire lost Slough and Eton to Berkshire; these areas have been administered under the unitary authorities of Slough and Windsor and Maidenhead since 1998. It has fertile agricultural lands, with many landed estates, especially those of the de Rothschild family in the 19th century. (more...)

Recently featured: Comet – Bob Dylan – Sino-Soviet split

May 20

A fancy cancel is a postal cancellation that includes an artistic design. Although the term may be used of modern machine cancellations that include artwork, it primarily refers to the designs carved in cork and used in 19th century post offices of the United States. When postage stamps were introduced in the US in 1847, postmasters were required to deface them to prevent reuse. A number of offices began to use cork bottle stoppers dipped in ink. These worked well, but would tend to blot out the entire stamp making it difficult to check the denomination, and so clerks began to carve a groove across the middle of the cork, making two semicircles. The carving process seems to have sparked the creativity of clerks across the country, and soon thousands of designs appeared, ranging from shields to skulls to stars, geometrical shapes, animals, plants, and devils with pitchforks. (more...)

Recently featured: Buckinghamshire – Comet – Bob Dylan

May 21

Crash test dummies have saved countless lives

Crash test dummies are full-scale replicas of human beings, weighted and articulated to simulate the behavior of a human body in a vehicle mishap, and instrumented to record as much data as possible on variables such as speed of impact, crushing force, bending, folding, or torquing of the body, and deceleration rates during a collision. In modern times, they remain indispensable in the development of new makes and models of all types of vehicles, from family sedans to fighter aircraft. (more...)

Recently featured: Fancy cancel – Buckinghamshire – Comet

May 22

Star Trek is a science fiction television franchise created by Gene Roddenberry in 1966 that tells the tale of the crew of the starship USS Enterprise and of their adventures "to boldly go where no man has gone before". The original show was cancelled in 1969 due to low ratings, but became phenomenally popular in syndication. To date, four additional TV series and ten motion pictures set within the Star Trek universe have been released. It is, along with Star Wars, the most popular science fiction franchise of the late 20th century. (more...)

Recently featured: Crash test dummy – Fancy cancel – Buckinghamshire

May 23

An enclave is, in human geography, a piece of land which is totally enclosed within a foreign territory. Enclaves may be created for a variety of historical, political or even geological reasons. Since living in an enclave can be very inconvenient and many agreements have to be found by both countries over mail addresses, power supply or passage rights, enclaves tend to be eliminated; many cases that existed in the past have now been resolved. (more...)

Recently featured: Star Trek – Crash test dummy – Fancy cancel

May 24

Rembrandt van Rijn is generally considered one of the greatest painters in Western art history, and the most important Dutch painter of the 17th century. Rembrandt was also a proficient engraver and made many drawings. His contributions to art came in a period that historians call the Dutch Golden Age (roughly equivalent to the 17th century), in which Dutch culture, science, commerce, world power and political influence reached their pinnacles. (more...)

Recently featured: Enclave – Star Trek – Crash test dummy

May 25

The British East India Company was founded by a Royal Charter of Queen Elizabeth I on December 31, 1600. Over the next 250 years, it became one of the most powerful commercial enterprises of its time. The British East India Company's business was centered on India, where it also acquired auxiliary governmental and military functions which came to overshadow its commercial activities. India was often referred to as the Jewel in the Crown. (more...)

Recently featured: Rembrandt van Rijn – Enclave – Star Trek

May 26

Single malt Scotch is a type of Scotch whisky, distilled by a single distillery, using malted barley as the only grain ingredient. This is in contrast to blended whisky, which consists of a mixture of single malt whiskies and whiskies derived from other grains. All single malt Scotch must be produced using a pot still, and be distilled, aged, and bottled in Scotland. (more...)

Recently featured: British East India Company – Rembrandt van Rijn – Enclave

May 27

A submarine is a specialized boat that travels under water, usually for military or scientific purposes. Most major navies of the world employ submarines. Submarines are also used for marine and freshwater science and for work at depths too great for human divers. U-boat is the abbreviation of Unterseeboot, the German name for submarines (first commissioned in WWI). Another underwater device for use in underwater exploration and salvage is the diving bell. (more...)

Recently featured: Single malt Scotch – British East India Company – Rembrandt van Rijn

May 28

Ludwig Wittgenstein was an Austrian-born philosopher who contributed several groundbreaking works to modern philosophy, primarily on the foundations of logic and the philosophy of language. Although numerous collections from Wittgenstein's notebooks, papers, and lectures have been published since his death, he published only one philosophical book in his own lifetime—the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus; his second magnum opus, Philosophical Investigations, was published posthumously. (more...)

Recently featured: Submarine – Single malt Scotch – British East India Company

May 29

In phonetics, a vowel is a sound in spoken language that is characterized by an open configuration of the vocal tract, in contrast to consonants, which are characterized by a constriction or closure at one or more points along the vocal tract. Vowels usually form the peak or nucleus of a syllable, whereas consonants form the onset and coda. Some languages allow sounds that wouldn't normally be classified as vowels to form the nucleus of a syllable, such as the sound of m in the English word prism, or the sound of r in the Czech word vrba (="willow"). Sometimes vowels are defined by the criterion of whether they form the nucleus of a syllable, and by that criterion these sounds are vowels, but usually the sounds that can form the nucleus of a syllable are called sonorants. (more...)

Recently featured: Ludwig Wittgenstein – Submarine – Single malt Scotch

May 30

Chinatown is a general name for an urban region containing a large population of Chinese people within a non-Chinese society. Chinatowns are most common in Southeast Asia and North America, but growing Chinatowns can be found in Europe and beyond. Chinatowns were formed in the 19th century in many areas of the United States and Canada as a result of discriminatory land laws which forbade the sale of land to Chinese outside of a restricted geographical area and which promoted the segregation of people of different ethnicities. However, the location of a Chinatown in a particular city may change over time. (more...)

Recently featured: Vowel – Ludwig Wittgenstein – Submarine

May 31

Helium on the periodic table

Helium is the chemical element in the periodic table that has the symbol He and atomic number 2. A colorless, odorless noble gas, helium has the lowest boiling point of any element and can only be solidified under great pressure. This element occurs as a monatomic gas. It is for practical purposes chemically inert. It is the second most abundant element in the universe after hydrogen. It is found in the Earth's atmosphere in trace amounts from the decay of certain minerals and is present in some mineral waters. Helium occurs in economically extractable amounts in certain natural gases and is used as a lifting gas for balloons and blimps, as a cryogenic cooling liquid for superconducting magnets. (more...)

Recently featured: Chinatown – Vowel – Ludwig Wittgenstein