Wikipedia:Main Page history/2014 September 17

George Formby (1904–1961) was an English actor, singer-songwriter and comedian. On stage, screen and record he sang light, comical songs, usually playing the ukulele or banjolele, and became the UK's highest-paid entertainer. After an early career as a stable boy and jockey, Formby took to the music hall stage after the early death of his father in 1921. In 1923 he purchased a ukulele, and married Beryl Ingham, a fellow-performer who became his manager. She insisted that he appear on stage formally dressed, and introduced the ukulele to his performance. He started his recording career in 1926 and, from 1934, he increasingly worked in film to develop into a major star. During the Second World War, Formby entertained civilians and troops (pictured in France), and by 1946 it was estimated that he had performed in front of three million service personnel. After the war his career declined, although he toured the Commonwealth, and continued to appear in variety and pantomime. Formby was considered Britain's first properly home-grown screen comedian. He was an influence on future comedians—particularly Charlie Drake and Norman Wisdom—and, culturally, on entertainers such as the Beatles. (Full article...)

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From Wikipedia's new and recently improved content:

• ... that the Sonderkommando photographs (example pictured) of events around the Auschwitz gas chambers in 1944 were smuggled out of the camp in a toothpaste tube?
• ... that the discoverers of mendelevium had to seek the permission of the United States government to propose it be named after Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev, father of the periodic table?
• ... that a female Afghan pika may have 30 or more offspring in a year?
• ... that Ron Capps served in five war zones in ten years before founding the Veterans Writing Project?
• ... that the title of Kim Kyu-jong's 2012 EP Meet Me Again refers to his promise to meet with his fans again after his two-year mandatory military service in South Korea?
• ... that Tony Gwynn bypassed the usual two-year wait for the San Diego Padres Hall of Fame in becoming its first unanimous selection?
• ... that Ecce sacerdos magnus by Anton Bruckner is a sacred work "of almost barbaric intensity"?

• The Social Democrats, led by Stefan Löfven (pictured), win a plurality in the Swedish general election.
• The 2014 FIBA Basketball World Cup concludes with the United States defeating Serbia in the final.
• South African athlete Oscar Pistorius is found guilty of the culpable homicide of his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp.
• Scientists report the first synthesis of germanene, a single-atom-thick nanomaterial that is the germanium equivalent of graphene.
• One of the ships from Franklin's lost expedition, missing since 1845, is discovered off King William Island, Canada.
• Researchers announce that newly described Dendrogramma specimens may represent a previously unknown phylum of animal life.

Ongoing:

Ebola outbreak –

Ukrainian conflict –

Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant

Recent deaths:

Ian Paisley

September 17: Constitution Day in the United States

• 1176 – Byzantine–Seljuk wars: The Seljuk Turks prevented the Byzantines from taking the interior of Anatolia at the Battle of Myriokephalon in Phrygia.
• 1716 – French soldier Jean Thurel enlisted in the Régiment de Touraine at the age of 17, beginning a career of military service that would span 90 years.
• 1849 – American slave Harriet Tubman (pictured) escaped; she would become famous for orchestrating the rescues of more than 70 other slaves via the "Underground Railroad".
• 1914 – Andrew Fisher, whose previous term as Prime Minister of Australia oversaw a period of reform unmatched in the Commonwealth until the 1940s, became Prime Minister for the third time.
• 1939 – World War II: The Soviet Union invaded Poland from the east, sixteen days after Nazi Germany's attack on that country from the west.

More anniversaries: September 16 – September 17 – September 18

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Richard Lugar (b. 1932) is an American politician and member of the Republican Party. Born in Indianapolis, Lugar served two terms as that city's mayor, from 1968 to 1976. In 1977 he was elected to the United States Senate, representing Indiana. In that capacity he worked to dismantle nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons. He was a co-sponsor of the Nunn–Lugar Act, which was intended to "secure and dismantle weapons of mass destruction and their associated infrastructure in former Soviet Union states". Lugar was defeated in the 2012 Senate primary by Richard Mourdock.

Photo: Office of Senator Richard Lugar