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Today is 3 February 2006. As of January 30th, there were 945,642 articles on the English Wikipedia. (refresh)

This naval battle was one of the sets for Elkanah Settle's Empress of Morocco

The Restoration spectacular, or elaborately staged "machine play", hit the London public stage in the late 17th-century Restoration period, enthralling audiences with action, music, dance, moveable scenery, baroque illusionistic painting, gorgeous costumes, and special effects such as trapdoor tricks, "flying" actors, and fireworks. These shows have always had a bad reputation as a vulgar and commercial threat to the witty, "legitimate" Restoration drama; however, they drew Londoners in unprecedented numbers and left them dazzled and delighted. Basically home-grown and with roots in the early 17th-century court masque, though never ashamed of borrowing ideas and stage technology from French opera, the spectaculars are sometimes called "English opera". The expense of mounting ever more elaborate scenic productions drove the two competing theatre companies into a dangerous spiral of huge expenditure and correspondingly huge losses or profits. (more...)

Recently featured: Adriaen van der Donck – Radhanites – Dixie

Did you know...

17:56, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

...that Giles Mompesson was officially branded a "notorious criminal" by the House of Lords in 1623 after a career of graft and extortion as licensor of inns?
...that the L'Arlésienne Suites were composed by Georges Bizet in 1872 to accompany the play of the same name by Alphonse Daudet?
...that Lady Macbeth wore a crown of saucepan lids in the 1933 production of Shakespeare's play, staged by Theodore Komisarjevsky in Stratford-on-Avon and popularly dubbed "Aluminium Macbeth"?
...that Sofia Petrovna, a book by Russian writer Lydia Chukovskaya written in 1939-1940, and published in the West in 1960s, was published in the Soviet Union only in 1988?
...that only three Super 14 rugby union teams ever won the Super 12?

05:59, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

...that from 1858 Sydneysiders could set their clocks by the ball dropped at 1 pm each day at the Sydney Observatory and that the observatory replaced Fort Philip which was never needed to be used for defending Sydney?
...that the Brothertown Indians were the first tribe of Native Americans in the United States to become United States citizens, which caused the tribe to relinquish their tribal sovereignty?
...that Jan Nagórski, Polish pioneer of aviation and the first person to fly an airplane over the Arctic, was presumed dead for 38 years?
...that, for the Dutch Old Masters, still lifes were a great opportunity to show one's aptitude in painting textures and surfaces in great detail and with realistic light effects?

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On this day...

February 3: Lichun begins in East Asia (2025); Feast day of Saint Laurence of Canterbury (Western Christianity); Four Chaplains' Day in the United States

British bomber flying to join the Battle of Keren

1813 – Argentine War of Independence: José de San Martín and the Mounted Grenadiers Regiment defeated Spanish royalist forces in the Battle of San Lorenzo.
1941 – Second World War: Free French and British forces (aircraft pictured) began the Battle of Keren to capture the strategic town of Keren in Italian East Africa.
1953 – Hundreds of native creoles known as Forros were massacred on São Tomé Island by the colonial administration and Portuguese landowners.
2023 – A freight train derailed in East Palestine, Ohio, releasing hazardous materials into the surrounding area.

Coloman, King of Hungary (d. 1116)
Abu Bakar of Johor (b. 1833)
Simone Weil (b. 1909)
Kanna Hashimoto (b. 1999)

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Today's featured picture

Alexander Litovchenko's 1875 painting depicting Ivan IV of Russia seated in the Kremlin Armoury, his half-witted heir Fyodor standing behind, a group of distrustful boyars whispering at a distance, and the Tsar's jester in a skomorokh cap addressing the English diplomat Jerome Horsey. Horsey was a resident of the Russia Company in Moscow from 1572 to 1585.

Artist: Alexander Litovchenko

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