Wikipedia:Main Page history/2020 July 22

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From today's featured article

Don Bradman

The Fourth Test of the 1948 Ashes series was one of five Tests in a cricket series between Australia and England. Played at Headingley Stadium at Leeds from 22 to 27 July, for the third time in a row the match set a new record for the highest attendance at a Test in England. On the last day, Australia, captained by Don Bradman (pictured), had a target of 404 to make up, and England had used a heavy roller to break up the pitch to make batting harder. Although many observers predicted that England would win easily on a deteriorating surface, Australia put together a stand of 301 in only 217 minutes, aided by erratic bowling and several missed catches and stumpings. Australia won the match by seven wickets with 15 minutes remaining to take an unassailable 3–0 series lead. In successfully chasing a target of 404, they set a new world record for the highest victorious runchase in Test history. (This article is part of a featured topic: Australian cricket team in England in 1948.)

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Gold dinar of Yusuf I

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... that Real Life, Brandon Taylor's debut novel, is an American campus novel about a gay, black doctoral student in a mostly white PhD program?
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... that the author of the hymn "Das Jahr steht auf der Höhe" wrote his reflections of midsummer in 1978 to a 16th-century melody of a love song?
... that the statue of Mary Seacole in London honours a woman voted the greatest black Briton?
... that Lauren Boebert encourages her servers to openly carry firearms inside her restaurant in Rifle, Colorado?

In the news

COVID-19 pandemic

Comet NEOWISE seen from Germany

A security breach in the administration system of Twitter results in many prominent accounts promoting a bitcoin scam.
At least sixteen people are killed in border clashes between Armenian and Azerbaijani armed forces.
Comet NEOWISE (pictured) is visible to the naked eye in the Northern Hemisphere.

On this day

July 22: Feast day of Saint Mary Magdalene (Christianity); Pi Approximation Day

Jules-Albert de Dion

1209 – In the first major military action of the Albigensian Crusade, a crusader army captured Béziers, France, and slaughtered the inhabitants.
1691 – Williamite War: The forces of William III of England defeated the Jacobites at the Battle of Aughrim, the bloodiest ever fought on Irish soil, with over 7,000 people killed.
1894 – Jules-Albert de Dion (pictured) finished first in the world's first motor race, but did not win as his steam-powered car was against the rules.
1944 – World War II: In opposition to the London-based government-in-exile, the Polish Committee of National Liberation was proclaimed to govern territory recaptured from Nazi Germany.
1997 – Written and illustrated by Eiichiro Oda, One Piece, the best-selling manga series in history, debuted in Weekly Shōnen Jump.

Anthony Browne (b. 1552)
Augusta Fox Bronner (b. 1881)
Harold Larwood (d. 1995)

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Today's featured picture

The Toilette is the fourth of a series of six oil-on-canvas paintings by English painter and pictorial satirist William Hogarth, created around 1743. The series, entitled Marriage A-la-Mode, depicts an arranged marriage and its disastrous consequences in a satire of 18th-century society, and is now in the collection of the National Gallery in London.

In this picture, titled The countess's morning levee by Hogarth, the old Earl Squanderfield has died; his son is now the new earl, and his wife the countess. She is holding a reception during her "toilette" in her bedroom. The fact that Hogarth ridiculed this gathering of people in the bedroom of a noble during their "morning" grooming shows that such a convocation in such an intimate room was increasingly viewed as inappropriate. While the countess is having her hair attended to, she is ignoring her guests and having a dalliance with her lawyer, Silvertongue, who is lounging on the sofa.

Painting credit: William Hogarth

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