This Signpost "Featured content" report covers material promoted from 1 to 15 January 2023. Quotes are generally from the articles, but may be abridged or simplified for length.
Well, here we are again! Thanks to the new twice monthly schedule, instead of covering a full month of content, we can just cover half a month, which should, in theory, have resulted in half the work.
You'd think that, wouldn't you? In the first half of January, we had exactly as many featured articles as in the whole of December (twenty-one). However, featured lists went the opposite direction, and we had only one of them. At least the number of featured pictures makes some sort of sense.
Ah, well. Things tend to get promoted in batches, and I think we just lined up with the promotions oddly. See you next fortnight!
23 Wall Street (also known as the J.P. Morgan Building) is an office building in the
Financial District of
Manhattan in New York City, at the southeast corner of
Wall Street and
Broad Street.
Trowbridge & Livingston designed the four-story building in the
neoclassical style. Constructed between 1913 and 1914, it was originally the headquarters of
J.P. Morgan & Co. Since the late 2000s, the building has remained unoccupied for long periods, although it has occasionally been used for events.
"Virginia, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men's or children's, are little. In this great universe of ours man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect, as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.
"Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus. It would be as dreary as if there were no Virginias. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished."
Marina Bay station was one of the last stations to be completed in the early phases of the MRT network, opening on 4 November 1989. It was the terminus of the NSL until the line's extension to
Marina South Pier station in 2014. The station became an interchange station with the CCL upon the completion of the two-station branch extension from
Promenade station in January 2012. The TEL station platforms were completed in November 2022 as part of TEL Stage 3, becoming a triple-line interchange on the MRT network.
Manos Arriba (English: Hands Up) is an
extended play (EP) by American singer
Rosanna Tavarez released by her own
record label Patacon Productions in March 2008. Tavarez adopted the
stage name Chana while pursuing a music career in
Latin alternative music and used it for the EP. Chana rose to prominence in 2001 as a member of the
girl groupEden's Crush. Following their disbandment, she worked as a
host on
music television shows and decided to record Spanish-language music after meeting producer Marthin Chan. She had previously rejected working with
Latin music producers because she did not want to pursue a career in conventional
Latin pop.
American transportation played a crucial part in the
military logistics of the World War II
Siegfried Line campaign, which ran from the end of the pursuit of the German armies from Normandy in mid-September 1944 until December 1944, when the United States Army was engulfed by the German
Ardennes offensive. In August 1944, the
Supreme Allied Commander,
GeneralDwight D. Eisenhower, elected to continue the pursuit of the retreating German forces beyond the
Seine instead of pausing to build up supplies and establish the
line of communications as called for in the original
Operation Overlord plan. The subsequent advance to the German border stretched the American logistical system to its breaking point, and the advance came to a halt in mid-September.
The Germans attempted to delay the Allied advance until the onset of bad weather by denying access to ports and demolishing communications infrastructure in order to give their own forces time to recover. Between September and November, the American forces in Europe suffered from severe transportation problems. In September,
Cherbourg was the only deep-water port in northwest Europe in Allied hands capable of handling
Liberty ships, but it had been badly damaged, and took a long time to restore. Smaller ports could only handle small, shallow-draft
coastal trading vessels known as "coasters". Two-thirds of the British coaster fleet, on which critical industries depended, was dedicated to the campaign. Over time rough seas, enemy action and continuous use laid up a quarter of the coaster fleet for repairs. Additional port capacity was obtained through the opening of
Rouen and
Le Havre in September and October respectively, and of
Antwerp in November. The limiting factor then shifted to port clearance. Initially, motor transport was widely used, but as the railways were brought back into service, they shouldered the burden of moving supplies from the ports to the depots. Inland water transport was developed to relieve pressure on the railways. Four waterways were rehabilitated for military use: the Seine,
Oise and
Rhône rivers, and the
Albert Canal. Air transport was the least economic form of transport, but in September and October, with road and rail transport unable to supply even the minimum daily requirements of the armies, it was called upon to supplement them.
Although logistical difficulties constituted a brake on combat operations, they were not the only factors that brought the Allied advance to a halt. The American forces also had to contend with rugged terrain, worsening weather and, above all, stubborn German resistance. The German recovery was sufficient to mount the Ardennes offensive in December. This threatened Antwerp and the depot areas around Liège, which also came under attack from German
V-weapons and air raids. This placed immense strain on the American communications, but by the new year the American transportation system was more robust than ever, and preparations were under way to support the final assault on Germany.
Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts is a 2008
platform game developed by
Rare and published by
Microsoft Game Studios for the
Xbox 360. Set eight years after Banjo-Tooie (2000), Nuts & Bolts follows
Banjo and Kazooie as they compete with the witch
Gruntilda for ownership of their home. Although Nuts & Bolts retains the structure of previous Banjo-Kazooie games—collecting
jigsaw puzzle pieces to progress—it shifts the focus from exploration to
vehicle construction. The player designs vehicles, including automobiles, boats, and aeroplanes, and uses them to complete challenges across various
worlds. In
multiplayer modes, players can compete or share their vehicles over
Xbox Live.
South Asian river dolphins are
toothed whales in the genus Platanista, which inhabit
fresh water habitats in the northern
Indian subcontinent. They were historically considered to be one species (P. gangetica) with the
Ganges river dolphin and the
Indus river dolphin being considered subspecies, but genetic and morphological evidence led to their being described as separate species in 2021. They are the only living members of the family
Platanistidae and the superfamily Platanistoidea. Fossils of ancient relatives date to the
late Oligocene.
South Asian river dolphins are small but stocky
cetaceans with long snouts or
rostra, broad flippers, and small dorsal fins. They have several unusual features. Living in murky river waters, their eyes are tiny and lensless. The dolphins rely instead on
echolocation for navigation. The skull has large crests over the
melon, which help direct their echolocation signals. These dolphins prey mainly on fish and shrimp and hunt them throughout the
water column. They are active through the day and are sighted in small groups. Both species are listed as
endangered by the
IUCN Red List of mammals. Major threats include dams,
barrages, fishing nets, and both chemical and
acoustic pollution.
“
Before the proposal could be put before the voters for final approval, it was noticed that though the legislature had intended that Assembly members be elected biennially (once in two years), the proposed amendment provided that they were to be chosen "biannually", meaning they were to be elected twice a year. After this discovery, the legislature passed a resolution defining biannually to mean biennially and proceeded with the referendum.
An unsuccessful attempt was made to pass
an amendment to the
Constitution of New Jersey in 1926 and 1927. The intent of the amendment was to have members of the
New Jersey General Assembly serve two-year terms instead of one and also lengthen the terms of
state senators and the governor from three years to four. The proposed amendment was passed twice by the legislature, and the text was approved by
the Attorney General. On September 20, 1927, the people of New Jersey voted down the proposal, and Assembly members were elected annually until New Jersey instituted a new constitution in 1947.
MLS Cup 1999 was the fourth edition of the
MLS Cup, the championship
soccer match of
Major League Soccer (MLS), the top-level soccer league of the United States. It took place on November 21, 1999, at
Foxboro Stadium in
Foxborough, Massachusetts, and was contested by
D.C. United and the
Los Angeles Galaxy in a rematch of the
inaugural 1996 final that had been played at the same venue. Both teams finished atop their respective conferences during the regular season under new head coaches and advanced through the first two rounds of the playoffs. United won 2–0 with first-half goals from
Jaime Moreno and
Ben Olsen for their third MLS Cup victory in four years.
Felix of Burgundy (died 8 March 647 or 648), also known as Felix of Dunwich, was a
saint and the first bishop of the
kingdom of the East Angles. He is widely credited as the man who introduced Christianity to the kingdom. Almost all that is known about him comes from The Ecclesiastical History of the English People, completed by the English historian
Bede in about 731, and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Bede wrote that Felix freed "the whole of this kingdom from long-standing evil and unhappiness"
The Providence and Worcester Railroad (P&W) (
reporting markPW) is a
Class II railroad operating 612 miles (985 km) of tracks in
Rhode Island,
Massachusetts, and
Connecticut, as well as
New York via
trackage rights. The company was founded in 1844 to build a railroad between
Providence, Rhode Island, and
Worcester, Massachusetts, and ran its first trains in 1847. The P&W operated independently until 1888, when the
New York, Providence and Boston Railroad (NYP&B) leased it; the
New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad took over when it purchased the NYP&B in 1892. The P&W continued to exist as a company, as special rules protecting minority shareholders made it prohibitively expensive for the New Haven to outright purchase the company. The New Haven continued to lease the Providence and Worcester for 76 years, until the former was merged into
Penn Central (PC) at the end of 1968. Penn Central demanded the shareholder rules keeping P&W alive be rewritten, and also threatened to abandon the company's tracks. In response, a group of P&W shareholders launched a fight with PC, convincing the
Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) to cancel the lease and let the P&W exit the New Haven's merger and go free. Against expectations, the ICC agreed, and following court battles P&W prevailed and began operating independently again after 85 years.
Featured pictures
Eleven
featured pictures were promoted this period, including the images at the top and bottom of this article.
In the wake of the
Supreme Court's 1954 decision Brown v. Board of Education, Meredith tried to
integrate Ole Miss by applying in 1961. When he informed the university that he was African American, his admission was delayed and obstructed, first by school officials and then by Mississippi Governor
Ross Barnett. In a bid to block his enrollment, Barnett even had Meredith temporarily jailed. Hoping to avoid violence and ensure Meredith's enrollment, President Kennedy and Attorney General
Robert F. Kennedy had a series of unproductive telephone negotiations with Barnett. In preparation for another registration attempt, federal law enforcement were dispatched to accompany Meredith to maintain order, but a riot erupted on campus. Partly incited by white supremacist General
Edwin Walker, the mob assaulted reporters and federal officers, burned and looted property, and hijacked vehicles. Reporters, U.S. marshals, and the U.S. Deputy Attorney General
Nicholas Katzenbach sheltered and were besieged in the
Lyceum, the university's administrative building. Into the late morning of October 1, 27 marshals received gunshot wounds, and two civilians—including
a French journalist—were murdered. Oblivious to the riot, President Kennedy made an
Oval Office Address, saluting Mississippi's help in registering Meredith. Once informed, Kennedy invoked the
Insurrection Act of 1807 and had U.S. Army squadrons under Brigadier General
Charles Billingslea quell the riot, mobilizing over 30,000 troops, the most for a single disturbance in American history.
The riot and the federal crackdown were a major turning point in the
civil rights movement and resulted in the desegregation of Ole Miss: the first integration of any public educational facility in Mississippi. Further, being the final time troops were deployed during the civil rights movement, it is regarded as the end of the segregationist tactic of
massive resistance.
Shannon Matilda Wells Lucid (born January 14, 1943) is an American
biochemist and retired
NASA astronaut. She has flown in space five times, including a prolonged mission aboard the Russian space station Mir in 1996, and is the only American woman to have stayed on Mir. From 1996 to 2007, Lucid held the record for the longest duration spent in space by an American and by a woman. She was awarded the
Congressional Space Medal of Honor in December 1996, making her the tenth person and the first woman to be accorded the honor.
Hove War Memorial is a
First World War memorial designed by
Sir Edwin Lutyens and located on Grand Avenue in
Hove, part of the city of
Brighton and Hove, on the south coast of England. Hove was the site of one of the earliest recruiting events at the beginning of the war and later of several military hospitals. Over 600 men from the town were killed during the war, a quarter of them from the local regiment alone. A war memorial committee was established in 1919 and Lutyens was engaged as architect, designing a
Tuscan column on a three-staged base, topped with a statue of
Saint George, patron saint of England. The base contains several dedicatory inscriptions but no names, which are instead recorded on plaques in the town's library.
The Battle of Helena was fought on July 4, 1863, near
Helena, Arkansas, during the
American Civil War.
Union troops captured the city in July 1862, and had been using it as a base of operations. Over 7,500
Confederate troops led by
Lieutenant GeneralTheophilus Holmes attempted to capture Helena in hopes of relieving some of the pressure on the Confederate army beseiged in
Vicksburg, Mississippi. Helena was defended by about 4,100 Union troops led by
Major GeneralBenjamin Prentiss, manning one fort and
four batteries. Differing interpretations of Holmes' order to attack at daylight resulted in
Brigadier GeneralJames F. Fagan's troops attacking Battery D unsupported, and Major General
Sterling Price's attack against the Union center was made after Fagan's had largely fizzled out. To the north, Confederate
cavalry commanded by Brigadier Generals
John S. Marmaduke and
Lucius M. Walker failed to act in concert and accomplished little. The assaults failed, and Vicksburg fell the same day. Later in the year, Union troops used Helena as a staging ground for their
successful campaign to capture
Little Rock, Arkansas.
The Japanese fire-bellied newt (Cynops pyrrhogaster) is a species of newt
endemic to Japan. The skin on its upper body is dark and its lower regions bright red, although coloration varies with age, genetics, and region. Adults are 8 to 15 cm (3.1 to 5.9 in) long. To deter predators, Japanese fire-bellied newts contain high levels of
tetrodotoxin, a
neurotoxin accumulated mainly from their diet.
Nolan developed an interest in filmmaking from a young age. After studying
English literature at
University College London, he made several short films before his feature film debut with Following (1998). Nolan gained international recognition with his second film, Memento (2000), for which he was nominated for the
Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. He transitioned from independent to studio filmmaking with Insomnia (2002), and found further critical and commercial success with The Dark Knight Trilogy (2005–2012), The Prestige (2006) and Inception (2010); the last of these earned Nolan two Oscar nominations—
Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay. This was followed by Interstellar (2014), Dunkirk (2017) and Tenet (2020). For Dunkirk, he earned two Academy Award nominations, including his first for
Best Director.
Sumitro Djojohadikusumo (
EVO: Soemitro Djojohadikoesoemo; 29 May 1917 – 9 March 2001) was an Indonesian statesman and one of the country's most influential economists. He held senior positions under Presidents
Sukarno and
Suharto intermittently between 1950 and 1978. During his career in government, Sumitro served as
Minister of Industry and Trade,
Minister of Finance, and the
Minister of Research in five different cabinets. He was also the Dean of the Faculty of Economics at the
University of Indonesia.
Born into a
Javanese family, Sumitro studied economics at the
Netherlands School of Economics and remained there throughout the
Second World War. Returning to Indonesia after the war, he was assigned to the country's diplomatic mission in the United States, where he sought to raise funds and garner international attention in the
struggle against Dutch colonialism. After the handover of sovereignty in the 1949
Dutch–Indonesian Round Table Conference, in which he took part, he joined the
Socialist Party of Indonesia and became Minister for Trade and Industry in the
Natsir Cabinet. However, during the 1950s, Sumitro favoured foreign investment, an unpopular position at that time which brought him into conflict with
nationalists and
communists, and in the late 1950s, Sumitro fled Jakarta and joined the insurrectionary
Revolutionary Government of the Republic of Indonesia in the late 1950s. Considered a leader of the movement, he operated from abroad, liaising with Western foreign intelligence organizations while seeking funds and international support. After the movement's defeat, Sumitro remained in exile as a vocal critic of Sukarno, continuing to agitate for the downfall of the government. After the overthrow of Sukarno and the establishment of the
New Order under Suharto, Sumitro was invited to return from exile and in 1967 was appointed Minister of Trade. However, after disagreements with Suharto on policy in the early 1970s, Sumitro was reassigned as Minister of Research before his removal from government posts altogether.
Hugh Ferguson (2 March 1895 – 8 January 1930) was a Scottish professional
footballer. Born in
Motherwell, he played for
Parkhead at
junior level as an amateur and was one of the most sought-after young players in Scotland before signing for
his hometown club to begin his professional career. He established himself as a consistent scorer playing as a
centre forward, finishing as the top goalscorer in the
Scottish Football League on three occasions between 1918 and 1921. His 284 league goals remains a
record at the club and, by 1925, he was the highest-scoring player in the history of the Scottish League.
David Christopher Kelly CMG (14 May 1944 – 17 July 2003) was a Welsh scientist and authority on
biological warfare (BW). A former head of the Defence Microbiology Division working at
Porton Down, Kelly was part of a joint US-UK team that inspected civilian biotechnology facilities in Russia in the early 1990s and concluded they were running a covert and illegal BW programme. He was appointed to the
United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) in 1991 as one of its chief weapons inspectors in Iraq and led ten of the organisation's missions between May 1991 and December 1998. He also worked with UNSCOM's successor, the
United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) and led several of their missions into Iraq. During his time with UNMOVIC he was key in uncovering the
anthrax production programme at the
Salman Pak facility, and a BW programme run at
Al Hakum.
A year after the publication of the
2002 dossier on Iraqi
weapons of mass destruction—which stated that some of Iraq's chemical and biological weapons were deployable within 45 minutes—Kelly had an
off-the-record conversation with
Andrew Gilligan, a
BBC journalist, about the claim. When Gilligan reported this on
BBC Radio 4's Today programme, he stated that the 45 minute claim was included at the insistence of
Alastair Campbell, the
Downing Street Director of Communications—Kelly denied that he said Campbell had forced in the reference. The government complained to the BBC about the claim, but they refused to recant on it; political tumult between Downing Street and the BBC developed. Kelly informed his line managers in the
Ministry of Defence that he may have been the source, but did not think he was the only one, as Gilligan had reported points he had not mentioned. Kelly's name became known to the media, and he was called to appear on 15 July before the parliamentary
Intelligence and Security and
Foreign Affairsselect committees. Two days later Kelly was found dead near his home.
Discuss this story