User:Allard

Hello and a warm welcome to all my fellow Wikipedians. How nice of you to drop in to see who I am!

About me:

Allard is the username of Allard Postma. I was born and have lived all my life in The Netherlands. I was born on May 13 1984.

Wikipedia & me:

How I discovered Wikipedia, I do not remember. But from being a reader I slowly became a contributor. Although I don't work that much on Wikipedia I do see myself as a Wikipedian. I don't go searching on Wikipedia what I can edit next, I edit what I find and want to do. This means I add and mainly improve a lot of small things and only rarely I make large edits.

My work:

My list of contributions

Articles I've started on Wikipedia:

• Fort Knox Bullion Depository
• Animals are Beautiful People
• Template:David Attenborough Television Series
• Template:Malta Islands

Images I made for Wikipedia:

• Dutch lower house as from 2006
• New image of the Netherlands Air Force Roundel
• Map on membership of the League of Nations
• United Nations membership map
• Improved image of the British Helgoland flag
• New image showing the current flag of Hel(i)goland

Article guide:

A list of articles worth looking at, if one can find them:

• Antidisestablishmentarianism
• Ball's Pyramid
• British Isles (terminology)
• Eadweard Muybridge
• Gunpowder Plot
• Horace de Vere Cole
• Humphrey (cat)
• Islomania
• List of countries by date of nationhood
• List of flags
• List of people who died on their birthdays
• List of regnal numerals of future British monarchs
• List of unusual deaths
• Northwest Angle
• Quadripoint
• Racetrack Playa
• Rule of tincture
• San Gimignano
• Transcontinental country
• Undivided India & Partition of India
• Voyager Golden Record
• Web colors
• Winchester Mystery House

And there's always the Random article

And to all citizens of the European Union, please read this: Oneseat.eu

News

• In tennis, Victoria Azarenka and Novak Djokovic win the women's and men's singles titles, respectively, at the 100th Australian Open.
• The European Men's Handball Championship concludes with Denmark defeating Serbia in the final.
• The European Union and 22 member nations sign the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, resulting in the resignation of the treaty's rapporteur and protests across Poland.
• Intense Tropical Cyclone Funso (pictured) stalls off the coast of Mozambique, killing 15 people at sea and at least 14 others through inland flooding.
• The European Union imposes an embargo on future oil contracts with Iran.
• British novelist Salman Rushdie cancels an appearance at the Jaipur Literature Festival in India, and four other writers leave the city after reading excerpts from The Satanic Verses, which is banned in the country.

Selected anniversaries

January 31: Independence Day in Nauru (1968)

• 1747 – The London Lock Hospital, the first clinic specialising in the treatment of venereal diseases, opened.
• 1919 – Intense rioting over labour conditions broke out in Glasgow, Scotland, and was only quelled when the British government sent tanks to restore order.
• 1942 – Second World War: Allied forces retreated from British Malaya to Singapore, ceding control of the country to Japan.
• 1961 – Aboard NASA's Mercury-Redstone 2, Ham the Chimp (pictured) became the first hominid launched into outer space.
• 1996 – Japanese amateur astronomer Yuji Hyakutake discovered Comet Hyakutake, which was one of the closest cometary approaches of the previous 200 years.
• 2001 – Scottish judges sitting in court in the Netherlands convicted Libyan national Abdelbaset al-Megrahi of 270 counts of murder in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103.

More anniversaries: January 30 – January 31 – February 1

It is now January 31, 2012 (UTC) – Refresh this page

Did you know...

From Wikipedia's newest content:

• ... that the basket star, Gorgonocephalus eucnemis (pictured), resembles an animated bush when trying to catch prey?
• ... that 8 million visitors to Expo 67 in Montreal saw Probošt's mechanical Christmas crib, a unique Czech nativity scene?
• ... that Georgios Stavros, who appeared on various Greek banknotes issued before 1932, was the founding governor of the National Bank of Greece?
• ... that former journalist hostage Terry A. Anderson led a campaign for the release of Turkish editor Ocak Isik Yurtçu?
• ... that Indonesian songstress Vina Panduwinata outperformed Janet Jackson and David Pomeranz at the 1985 World Popular Song Festival?
• ... that Saeed Malekpour, an Iranian web designer and Canadian permanent resident, has been sentenced to death by Iran for allegedly designing and moderating pornographic websites?
• ... that the film 10 Promises to My Dog is based on a novel that was inspired by The Ten Commandments of Dog Ownership?
  

Today's featured article

The Liberty Head nickel was an American five-cent piece. It was struck for circulation from 1883 until 1912, with at least five pieces being surreptitiously struck dated 1913. The original copper–nickel five-cent piece, the Shield nickel, had longstanding production problems, and in the early 1880s, the United States Mint was looking to replace it. Mint Chief Engraver Charles Barber was instructed to prepare designs for proposed one-, three-, and five-cent pieces, which were to bear similar designs. Only the new five-cent piece was approved, and went into production in 1883. For almost thirty years large quantities of coin of this design were produced to meet commercial demand, especially as coin-operated machines became increasingly popular. Beginning in 1911, the Mint began work to replace the Liberty head design, and a new design, which became known as the Buffalo nickel, went into production in February 1913. Although no 1913 Liberty head nickels were officially struck, five are known to exist. While it is uncertain how these pieces originated, they have come to be among the most expensive coins in the world, with one selling in 2010 for $3,737,500. (more...)

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Picture of the day

A light microscope image of tissue paper. The tissue was illuminated with ultraviolet light making it glow blue due to natural autofluorescence, the same effect which makes paper glow with a black light. The tangled network of fibres are cellulose fibres which are derived from wood and make up all types of paper and cardboard. It is a combination of the properties of cellulose and additional optical brightening agents which makes the tissue glow. Photo: Richard Wheeler Archive – More featured pictures...