Wikipedia:Main Page history/2021 May 25

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From today's featured article

Josip Broz Tito (far right) with his ministers and staff

Operation Rösselsprung was a combined airborne and ground assault by the German XV Mountain Corps on the Supreme Headquarters of the Yugoslav Partisans during World War II. Launched on 25 May 1944, the operation was aimed at the Partisan leader Marshal Josip Broz Tito (pictured) and his headquarters. It is associated with the Seventh Enemy Offensive. The operation involved direct action via an airborne assault by the 500th SS Parachute Battalion and a planned subsequent link-up with ground forces, including Home Guard forces of the Independent State of Croatia and collaborationist Chetniks. Tito, his principal staff and Allied military personnel escaped. The operation failed due to fierce Partisan resistance, the failure of the various German intelligence agencies to share the limited intelligence available on Tito's exact location, and the lack of contingency planning by the commander of the German airborne force. (Full article...)

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In the news

Phil Mickelson

In golf, Phil Mickelson (pictured) wins the PGA Championship.
Journalist Roman Protasevich is arrested after his Ryanair flight is forced to land at Minsk National Airport in Belarus.
A cable car accident near Lake Maggiore in Italy kills 14 people.
Due to extreme weather, 21 trail runners die in an ultramarathon held in Jingtai, China.
In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mount Nyiragongo volcano erupts, destroying residential areas north of Goma and forcing people to evacuate.

On this day

May 25: Africa Day (1963); Anniversary of the First National Government in Argentina (1810); Independence Day in Jordan (1946)

Great Wall of China

1644 – Ming–Qing transition: Ming general Wu Sangui allowed the invading Manchu to pass through the Great Wall of China (pictured), allowing them to capture Beijing.
1816 – The English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge published one of his most famous poems, Kubla Khan.
1878 – Gilbert and Sullivan's comic opera H.M.S. Pinafore premiered at the Opera Comique in London.
1961 – In an address to Congress, U.S. president John F. Kennedy announced his support for the Apollo program, with "the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth".
2011 – The final episode of The Oprah Winfrey Show, the highest-rated daytime talk show in U.S. television history, was broadcast.

Princess Helena of the United Kingdom (b. 1846)
Elizabeth Kane (d. 1909)
Ruby Payne-Scott (d. 1981)

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Today's featured picture

The Adonis blue (Polyommatus bellargus) is a butterfly in the family Lycaenidae found in Europe and parts of West Asia. This photograph shows the underside of the folded wings of a male, the upper side being a bright, sky-blue; the photograph was taken in a chalk meadow at Yoesden Bank in Buckinghamshire, England.

Photograph credit: Charles J. Sharp

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