Wikipedia:Main Page history/2018 May 22

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From today's featured article

Elizabeth David (1913–1992) was a British cookery writer. In the mid-20th century she helped revitalise home cookery in her native country and beyond with articles and books about European cuisines and traditional British dishes. Born to an upper-class family, she studied art in Paris and travelled to Greece, where she was nearly trapped by the German invasion in 1941. Returning to England in 1946, she was dismayed by the contrast between the bad food served in Britain and the simple foods she had enjoyed in France, Greece and Egypt. She wrote magazine articles about Mediterranean cooking, and in 1950 published A Book of Mediterranean Food. Her recipes called for ingredients such as aubergines, basil, figs, garlic, olive oil and saffron, which at the time were scarcely available in Britain. By the 1960s David was a major influence on domestic and professional British cooking. Between 1950 and 1984 she published eight books; after her death a further four were published. (Full article...)

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Did you know...

A miniature from the Gospels of Tsar Ivan Alexander

... that until D. H. Turner organised its loan, the Gospels of Tsar Ivan Alexander (detail pictured) had not been in Bulgaria for half a millennium?
... that the proposed Special Counsel Independence and Integrity Act seeks to protect Robert Mueller from being arbitrarily fired?
... that 20 years after confessing to the murder of a four-year-old boy, two brothers had all suspicions against them dismissed?
... that Corinne Foxx changed her surname from Bishop as her father, Jamie Foxx, had done?
... that The Black Book of Polish Jewry, published in the United States in 1943 during World War II, downplayed the true scale of the Holocaust?
... that Birgit Arrhenius revealed that a Torslunda plate helmeted figure, thought to represent Odin, had its eye deliberately struck out, consistent with the associated legend?
... that Lago di Bientina was the largest lake in Tuscany until the beginning of a 300-year effort to drain it?
... that Irish surgeon Gustavus Hume was so fond of prescribing oatmeal porridge to his patients that he became known as "Stirabout Gusty"?

In the news

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle

Incumbent Nicolás Maduro is re-elected President of Venezuela.
Shoplifters wins the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival.
In the United Kingdom, Prince Harry marries Meghan Markle (bride and groom pictured in 2017).
A passenger aircraft crashes shortly after takeoff from Havana, Cuba, killing 111 people.
Israeli troops kill more than 60 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, on the day the United States moves its embassy to Jerusalem.

On this day...

May 22: International Day for Biological Diversity

Trevi Fountain

853 – Byzantine–Arab Wars: The Byzantine navy began to sack and plunder the port city of Damietta on the Nile Delta, whose garrison was absent at the time.
1762 – The Trevi Fountain (pictured) in Rome was officially inaugurated by Pope Clement XIII.
1849 – Abraham Lincoln was issued a patent for an invention to lift boats over obstacles in a river, making him the only U.S. President to ever hold a patent.
1958 – Ethnic rioting broke out in Ceylon, targeted mostly at the minority Sri Lankan Tamils, resulting in up to 300 deaths over the next five days.
2012 – Tokyo Skytree, the tallest tower in the world at a height of 634 m (2,080 ft), opened to the public.

Constantine X Doukas (d. 1067) · Mary Cassatt (b. 1884) · Apolo Ohno (b. 1982)

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Today's featured picture

The European robin (Erithacus rubecula) is a small insectivorous passerine bird. Formerly classified as a member of the thrush family, it is now considered to be an Old World flycatcher. About 12.5–14.0 cm (5.0–5.5 inch) in length, males and females are similar in colouration, with an orange breast and face lined with grey, brown upperparts and a whitish belly; the orange breast emerges gradually after birth, as with the juvenile specimen shown here. The species is found across Europe, east to Western Siberia and south to North Africa; it is sedentary in most of its range except the far north. The unrelated American robin was named after it.

Photograph: Charles J. Sharp

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