Wikipedia:Main Page history/2013 December 27

Homework is the debut studio album by French electronic music duo Daft Punk (Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo pictured in 2010), released in January 1997 on Virgin Records. Homework's success brought worldwide attention to French house music. According to The Village Voice, the album revived house music and departed from the Eurodance formula. The duo produced the tracks without plans to release an album. After working on projects that were intended to be separate singles over five months, they considered the material good enough for an album. Homework charted in 14 different countries, peaking at number 150 on the United States Billboard 200 and at number 8 on the UK Albums Chart. By February 2001, the album had sold more than two million copies worldwide and received several gold and platinum certifications. Overall Homework received positive critical response. The album features singles that had significant impact in the French house and global dance music scenes. These include the US Billboard Hot Dance/Club Play number-one singles "Da Funk" and "Around the World", the latter of which reached number 61 on the Billboard Hot 100. (Full article...)

Recently featured: 2003 Insight Bowl – Jesus – Banksia epica

From Wikipedia's new and recently improved content:

• ... that it has been said of painter Vardges Sureniants (pictured) that he "will live as long as the Armenian people"?
• ... that the snake Philodryas baroni emits a foul-smelling substance from the cloaca when frightened?
• ... that Virginia House Delegate Isaac Parsons served as a militia officer during the American Revolutionary War and operated a ferry across the South Branch Potomac River?
• ... that the first Duke of Qin inherited his father's land at Lixian when his older brother Shifu chose to dedicate his life to war against the barbarians who killed their grandfather?
• ... that Sandycombe Lodge, a Grade II* listed house designed by and built for artist J. M. W. Turner in 1813, was added to English Heritage's Heritage at Risk Register in 2013?
• ... that 2012 Spanish wheelchair tennis Paralympian Lola Ochoa Ribes first played the sport using her everyday wheelchair?
• ... that in a survey of 270 Americans, none of them knew how global warming works?

• Amidst fears of civil war, the United Nations Security Council agrees to send more UNMISS soldiers to South Sudan.
• Pioneering British computer scientist and code breaker Alan Turing, convicted in 1952 of gross indecency for homosexual activity, is granted a posthumous royal pardon.
• After the pardoning of businessman Mikhail Khodorkovsky, an amnesty law in Russia leads to the release of thousands of prisoners, including two members of Pussy Riot (Nadezhda Tolokonnikova pictured), and the dropping of charges against participants in a Greenpeace protest.
• In handball, the World Women's Championship concludes with Brazil defeating Serbia in the final.
• ESA's Gaia space observatory is launched to compile a catalogue of astronomical objects.

Recent deaths: Mikhail Kalashnikov – David Coleman – Ronnie Biggs

December 27

• 1845 – John L. O'Sullivan, in his newspaper the New York Morning News, argued that the United States had the right to claim the entire Oregon Country "by the right of our manifest destiny".
• 1904 – The stage play Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up by Scottish author and dramatist J. M. Barrie (pictured), about a mischievous little boy who can fly, premiered in London.
• 1922 – The Imperial Japanese Navy commissioned Hōshō, the world's first purpose-built aircraft carrier.
• 1997 – Loyalist Volunteer Force leader Billy Wright was assassinated in the Maze prison by members of the Irish National Liberation Army.
• 2009 – During protests in Tehran against the recent presidential election, Iranian security forces opened fire on demonstrators on the Day of Ashura.

More anniversaries: December 26 – December 27 – December 28

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Morpho peleides, also known as the Peleides Blue Morpho, Common Morpho, or The Emperor, is an iridescent tropical butterfly found in the Western Hemisphere. The brilliant blue color in the butterfly's wings is caused by the diffraction of the light from millions of tiny scales on its wings.

Photo: Thomas Bresson