Wikipedia:Today's featured article/February 2025

February 1

Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that examines the basic structure of reality. Some philosophers designate it as first philosophy to suggest that it is more fundamental than other forms of philosophical inquiry. It is traditionally seen as the study of mind-independent features of the world, but some theorists view it as an inquiry into the conceptual framework of human understanding. Metaphysics investigates the nature of existence, the features all entities have in common, and their division into categories of being. An influential division is between particulars and universals. Modal metaphysics examines what it means for something to be possible or necessary. Metaphysicians also explore the concepts of space, time, and change, and their connection to causality and the laws of nature. Other topics include how mind and matter are related, whether everything in the world is predetermined, and whether there is free will. The roots of metaphysics lie in antiquity with speculations about the nature and origin of the universe. (Full article...)

February 2

Joyce, c. 1918

James Joyce (2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941) was an Irish novelist, poet and literary critic. He contributed to the modernist avant-garde movement and is regarded as one of the most influential and important writers of the 20th century. He is best known for his short story collection Dubliners, and for his novels A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Ulysses and Finnegans Wake. Together with Virginia Woolf and Dorothy Richardson, he is credited with the development of the stream of consciousness technique in which the same weight is given to both the internal world of the mind and the external world of events and circumstances as factors shaping the actions and views of fictional characters. His fictional universe is firmly rooted in Dublin and reflects his family life and the events and friends and enemies from his school and college days. In this, he became both one of the most cosmopolitan and local of all the prominent English language modernists. (Full article...)

February 3

A domestic goose like the one featured in Untitled Goose Game

Untitled Goose Game is a 2019 indie puzzle stealth video game developed by House House and published by Panic Inc. Players control a goose which bothers the inhabitants of an English village. Players must use the goose's abilities to manipulate objects and non-player characters to complete objectives. Inspired by Super Mario 64 and the Hitman series, the game combines stealth mechanics with a lack of violence to create humorous scenarios. It was released for macOS, Nintendo Switch, Windows, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. The game's unusual name came from a last-minute decision during preparation for entry to a games festival. The music uses short clips from six of Claude Debussy's Préludes. Untitled Goose Game received positive reviews, with critics praising its gameplay and humour. The game received the D.I.C.E. Award for Game of the Year and the Game Developers Choice Award for Game of the Year, among other accolades. Dan Golding, who curated the game music, was nominated for an ARIA award. By the end of 2019, Untitled Goose Game had sold more than a million copies. (Full article...)

February 4

Diagram of prostate tumor pressing on urethra

Prostate cancer is the uncontrolled growth of cells in the prostate. It is often detected through blood tests for prostate-specific antigen, followed by a biopsy. Most prostate tumors cause no health problems, and are managed with surveillance. Dangerous tumors can be surgically removed or destroyed with radiation therapy. Those whose cancer spreads receive hormone therapy, targeted therapy, and eventually chemotherapy. Most tumors are confined to the prostate, and 99% of men survive 10 years post-diagnosis. Those whose tumors have metastasized to distant body sites have a poorer prognosis; 30–40% are still alive five years after diagnosis. Each year 1.2 million men are diagnosed with prostate cancer and 350,000 die of the disease, making it the second-leading cause of cancer in men. Prostate tumors were first described in the mid-19th century. Hormone therapies were developed in the mid-20th century, resulting in Nobel Prizes for their developers Charles Huggins and Andrzej Schally. (Full article...)

February 5

Civic reception for the Notts County team after their victory in the 2009–10 Football League Two

During the 2009–10 English football season, Notts County F.C. competed in Football League Two, the fourth tier of the English football league system. Shortly before the season began, the club was subject to a high-profile takeover by Munto Finance, which was controlled by a convicted fraudster. The club had been acquired as part of an elaborate scheme to list a fake mining company on the stock exchange. The scheme collapsed and Notts County was left deeply in debt. A further takeover prevented bankruptcy and saw the team winning the League Two championship and promotion to Football League One. The team also fared well in the FA Cup, reaching the last sixteen of the competition. The season saw four different owners, three permanent first-team managers and two spells of interim management. In total, the team played 54 competitive matches, winning 31, drawing 14 and losing nine. Notts County continued to experience off-field problems and the team were relegated to non-League football in 2019. (Full article...)

February 6

John Silva Meehan was an American publisher, printer, and newspaper editor. Born in New York City on February 6, 1790, he served in the US Navy during the War of 1812. He then moved to Philadelphia, publishing a Baptist religious journal. When the firm moved to Washington, D.C. in 1822, Meehan edited and published a Baptist weekly newspaper. In late 1825 he purchased the City of Washington Gazette, renaming it the United States' Telegraph and taking a partisan stance. He was appointed as librarian of Congress in 1828. A large fire in December 1851 destroyed much of the Library of Congress's collection; Meehan oversaw its reconstruction. The election of Abraham Lincoln prompted Meehan's removal in 1861, and he died suddenly in 1863. Historians were critical of Meehan's tenure, noting that he deferred to the Joint Committee on the Library for policy, did not change the library's catalog system, and failed to make progress in transforming the institution into a true national library. (Full article...)

February 7

Major General Patch (foreground) observing the landing of troops and supplies

The Battle of Mount Austen, the Galloping Horse, and the Sea Horse took place from 15 December 1942 to 23 January 1943 and was primarily an engagement between United States and Imperial Japanese forces in the hills near the Matanikau River on Guadalcanal during the Guadalcanal campaign. The U.S. forces were under the overall command of Major General Alexander Patch (pictured), the Japanese under the overall command of Lieutenant General Harukichi Hyakutake. U.S. soldiers and Marines, assisted by native Solomon Islanders, attacked Imperial Japanese Army forces defending well-entrenched positions on several hills and ridges. With difficulty the U.S. succeeded in taking Mount Austen, in the process reducing a strongly defended position called the Gifu, as well as the Galloping Horse and the Sea Horse. In the meantime, the Japanese decided to abandon Guadalcanal and withdrew; most of the surviving Japanese troops were successfully evacuated. (This article is part of a featured topic: Guadalcanal Campaign.)

February 8

Meitner, c. 1960

Lise Meitner (1878–1968) was an Austrian-Swedish nuclear physicist who was instrumental in the discovery of nuclear fission and protactinium. In 1905, she became the second woman from the University of Vienna to earn a doctorate in physics. She spent much of her scientific career at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Chemistry in Berlin. In 1938 she fled Nazi Germany and moved to Sweden. That year, chemists Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann demonstrated that isotopes of barium could be formed by neutron bombardment of uranium. Meitner and her nephew Otto Robert Frisch, correctly interpreted their results and worked out the physics of this process, which they named "fission". The discovery led to the development of atomic bombs and nuclear reactors during World War II. Meitner did not share the 1944 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the discovery of fission, which was awarded to Otto Hahn alone, but she received many other honours, including the posthumous naming of element 109 meitnerium in 1997. (Full article...)

February 9

The Japanese battleship Tosa (土佐) was a planned battleship of the Imperial Japanese Navy. Designed by Yuzuru Hiraga, Tosa was to be the first of two Tosa-class ships. Displacing 39,900-long-ton (40,540 t) and armed with ten 410 mm (16.1 in) guns, these warships would have brought Japan closer to its goal of an "Eight-four" fleet (eight battleships and four battlecruisers). Compared with earlier designs the ships would have had higher steaming speed despite increased tonnage, flush decks, and inclined armor. Tosa was ordered in 1918, laid down in February 1920 in Nagasaki and launched in December 1921. All work on the ship was halted in February 1922 after the Washington Naval Conference and the signing of the Washington Naval Treaty. As the vessel had to be destroyed in accordance with the terms of the treaty, it was subjected to various tests to gauge the effectiveness of Japanese weaponry before being scuttled on 9 February 1925. (This article is part of a featured topic: Battleships of Japan.)

February 10

The siege of Baghdad took place in early 1258 when a large army under Hulegu, a prince of the Mongol Empire, attacked Baghdad, the capital of the Abbasid Caliphate. Hulegu had been sent by his brother, the Mongol khan Möngke, to conquer Persia. He expected Baghdad's ruler, Caliph al-Musta'sim, to reinforce his army, but this did not happen. Provoked by al-Musta'sim's arrogance, Hulegu decided to overthrow him. The Mongol army of over 138,000 men routed a sortie by flooding their camp, and besieged the city, which was left with around 30,000 troops. After Mongol siege engines breached Baghdad's walls, al-Musta'sim surrendered on 10 February, and was later executed. The Mongol army pillaged the city for a week; the number of deaths is unknown, but Hulegu estimated a total of 200,000. The siege, often seen as the end of the Islamic Golden Age, was in reality not era-defining: Baghdad later prospered under Hulegu's Ilkhanate. (Full article...)

February 11

Northern Bank headquarters at Donegall Square

On 20 December 2004, £26.5 million was stolen from the Northern Bank in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Having taken family members of two bank officials hostage, an armed gang forced the workers to help them steal banknotes. It was one of the largest bank robberies in the United Kingdom. The police and British and Irish governments claimed the Provisional Irish Republican Army was responsible, which was denied. Police forces made inquiries and arrests in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. A sum of £2.3 million was impounded from a financial adviser, Ted Cunningham, in County Cork; he was convicted in 2009. Chris Ward, one of the bank officials, was arrested in November 2005 and charged with robbery. The prosecution offered no evidence at trial and he was released. Northern Bank replaced its own bank notes. The robbery adversely affected the Northern Ireland peace process and hardened the relationship between the Taoiseach and Sinn Féin. Nobody has ever been held directly responsible for the robbery. (Full article...)

February 12

Ragnar Garrett (12 February 1900 – 4 November 1977) was Chief of the General Staff in the Australian Army from 1958 to 1960. He completed staff training in England just as the Second World War broke out, joined the Second Australian Imperial Force, and commanded the 2/31st Battalion in England before seeing action with Australian brigades in Greece and Crete in 1941. Promoted to colonel the following year, he held senior positions with I Corps in New Guinea and II Corps on Bougainville in 1944–1945. He was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire for his staff work. After the war, he served two terms as commandant of the Staff College, Queenscliff, in 1946–1947 and 1949–1951. Between these appointments he was posted to Japan with the British Commonwealth Occupation Force. He took charge of Western Command in August 1951, became Deputy Chief of the General Staff in January 1953, and took over Southern Command as a lieutenant general in October 1954. He was knighted in 1959. (Full article...)

February 13

Gao Qifeng (1889–1933) was a Chinese painter who co-founded the Lingnan School. Gao spent much of his early life following his older brother Gao Jianfu, learning the techniques of Ju Lian before travelling to Tokyo in 1907 to study Western and Japanese painting. While abroad, Gao joined the revolutionary organization Tongmenghui to challenge the Qing dynasty; after he returned to China, he published the nationalist magazine The True Record. He moved to Guangzhou in 1918, taking teaching positions that culminated with an honorary professorship at Lingnan University in 1925. Falling ill in 1929, Gao left for Ersha Island, where he established the Tianfang Studio. He blended traditional Chinese approaches with Japanese techniques for light and shadow and Western understandings of geometry and perspective. He is best recognized for his paintings of animals, particularly eagles, lions, and tigers. (Full article...)

February 14

Adele

"My Little Love" is a song by English singer Adele from her fourth studio album, 30 (2021). Adele wrote it with its producer, Greg Kurstin. The song became available as the album's third track on 19 November 2021, when it was released by Columbia Records. "My Little Love" is a jazz, R&B, and soul song with a 1970s-style groove, gospel music influences, late-night bar piano, and a funk bassline. The song incorporates voice notes of Adele's conversations with her son as she explains the effects of her divorce on his life and pleads for his understanding and forgiveness. Critics generally praised "My Little Love", comparing it to the work of Marvin Gaye, among other artists. Reviews highlighted the emotionalism and vulnerability displayed in the song, but some found the inclusion of the voice notes excessive. The track reached the top 20 in Australia, Canada, Iceland, the Netherlands, New Zealand, and Sweden and entered the top 40 in several other countries. (This article is part of a featured topic: 30 (album).)

February 15

The Boot Monument is an American Revolutionary War memorial located in Saratoga National Historical Park, New York. Sculpted by George Edwin Bissell and erected during 1887 by John Watts de Peyster, it commemorates Major General Benedict Arnold's service at the Battles of Saratoga while in the Continental Army, but does not mention him on the monument as Arnold later defected from the Americans to the British. Instead, it commemorates Arnold as the "most brilliant soldier of the Continental Army". While fighting at the Battle of Bemis Heights, the second of the Saratoga engagements, Arnold was shot and severely injured in his left leg. His horse was also hit by gunfire and fell on Arnold, crushing his already injured leg. Arnold was then passed over for promotion and court-martialed. Feeling hard done by he attempted to help the British capture the fortification of West Point but was discovered and fled to the British army. (Full article...)

February 16

Tropical Storm Gabrielle on September 9

Tropical Storm Gabrielle was a short-lived tropical cyclone that passed over North Carolina before tracking out to sea. The seventh named storm of the 2007 Atlantic hurricane season, Gabrielle developed as a subtropical cyclone on September 8 about 385 miles (620 km) southeast of Cape Lookout, North Carolina. Unfavorable wind shear impacted the storm for much of its duration, although a temporary decrease in the shear allowed the cyclone to become a tropical storm. On September 9, it made landfall at Cape Lookout National Seashore in North Carolina with winds of 60 mph (97 km/h). Turning to the northeast, the storm quickly weakened and dissipated on September 11. The storm dropped heavy rainfall near its immediate landfall location but little precipitation elsewhere. Along the coast of North Carolina, slight localized flooding was reported. Along the coast of Florida, rough surf drowned one person. Overall damage was minor. (Full article...)

February 17

A vial of methanol (left) and one of ethanol

Over 70 people died of methanol poisoning in the Russian city of Irkutsk in December 2016. Caused by the consumption of adulterated surrogate alcohol, it was the deadliest such incident in Russia's post-Soviet history. Russian consumption of surrogate alcohol rose rapidly in the early 2010s amid worsening economic conditions. Surrogates cost less than government-regulated vodka and were commonly available. In the Irkutsk incident, people drank hawthorn-scented bath oil which was typically made with and labeled as containing drinkable ethanol. At least one batch was made instead with a toxic amount of methanol, causing injuries and deaths among residents of the Novo-Lenino neighborhood in Irkutsk. An investigation found that the surrogate alcohol's producer sourced the methanol from an employee of a local windshield washer fluid production facility. Subsequently punishments were increased for illegally producing and selling alcohol, and it was made more difficult to acquire surrogate alcohol. (Full article...)

February 18

McAdoo, 1946

Benjamin F. McAdoo (1920 – 1981) was an American architect mainly active in the Seattle area. Born in Pasadena, California, he was inspired to study architecture by a mechanical drawing class and the work of Paul R. Williams. After working as a draftsman for local architectural firms and the Corps of Engineers, he pursued his Bachelor of Architecture at the University of Washington. The first licensed Black architect in the state of Washington, his work featured a modernist aesthetic influenced by the Northwest Regional style. After designing a number of low-income houses and apartments throughout the 1950s, he was hired by the Agency for International Development to design modular houses in Jamaica. He returned to Seattle after a period of work in Washington, D.C., and pursued civic commissions. Outside of work, he participated in the NAACP, hosted a weekly radio show on racial issues for several years, and unsuccessfully ran for a seat in the Washington House of Representatives. (Full article...)

February 19

Huaynaputina is a volcano in a volcanic plateau in southern Peru. Lying in the Central Volcanic Zone of the Andes, it was formed by the subduction of the oceanic Nazca plate under the continental South American plate. Huaynaputina is a large volcanic crater, lacking an identifiable mountain profile, with an outer stratovolcano and three younger volcanic vents within an amphitheatre-shaped structure that is either a former caldera or a remnant of glacial erosion. The volcano has erupted dacitic magma. In the Holocene, Huaynaputina has erupted several times, including on 19 February 1600 – the largest eruption ever recorded in South America. Witnessed by people in the city of Arequipa, it killed at least 1,000 people in the region, wiped out vegetation, buried the surrounding area with 2 metres (7 ft) of volcanic rock and damaged infrastructure and economic resources. The eruption caused a volcanic winter and may have played a role in the onset of the Little Ice Age. Floods, famines, and social upheavals resulted, including a probable link with the Russian Time of Troubles. (Full article...)

February 20

Tesla union drive at Gigafactory New York in 2023.

Tesla has labor disputes in the United States, Germany and Sweden, including an ongoing strike in Sweden. Tesla CEO Elon Musk has expressed his opposition to unions on Twitter (now called X). These tweets are currently under scrutiny by US courts to determine whether they are protected free speech or unlawful. All unionization efforts at Tesla's Fremont Factory and Gigafactory New York in the United States have been unsuccessful. In Germany, Gigafactory Berlin-Brandenburg and Tesla Automation have elected works councils, but they have not signed collective bargaining agreements with IG Metall, a German trade union. The Gigafactory Berlin-Brandenburg works council is divided into pro-union and anti-union factions. In Sweden, mechanics who are members of IF Metall, a Swedish trade union, have been on strike since October 27, 2023, making it the longest strike in Sweden since 1938. The strike has since spread, with other Swedish, Danish and Norwegian unions calling for solidarity strikes. (Full article...)

February 21

The Virgo interferometer is a large-scale scientific instrument near Pisa, Italy, for detecting gravitational waves. The detector measures minuscule length variations in its two 3-km (1.9 mi) arms induced by the passage of gravitational waves. The project, named after the Virgo galaxy cluster, was first approved in 1992 and construction was completed in 2003. After undergoing important upgrades between 2011 and 2016 (during which LIGO made the first detection of gravitational waves), Virgo made its first detection on 14 August 2017; followed by the detection of the GW170817 gravitational wave, the only one also observed with classical methods (optical, gamma-ray, X-ray and radio telescopes) as of 2024. Virgo is managed by the Virgo Collaboration, gathering 940 members in 20 countries, in cooperation with similar detectors such as LIGO and KAGRA. (Full article...)

February 22

Eddie Gerard (February 22, 1890 – August 7, 1937) was a Canadian ice hockey player, coach, and manager. Born in Ottawa, Ontario, he played professionally for 10 seasons for the Ottawa Senators, as a left winger for three years before switching to defence. He was the first player to win the Stanley Cup four years in a row, from 1920 to 1923, three times with the Senators and once as an injury replacement player with the Toronto St. Patricks. After his playing career he served as a coach and manager, working with the Montreal Maroons from 1925 until 1929, and winning the Stanley Cup in 1926. He coached the New York Americans for two seasons before returning to the Maroons for two more seasons, then ended his career coaching the St. Louis Eagles in 1934. Regarded as one of the best defenders of his era, Gerard was one of the original nine players inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1945. He is also an inductee of Canada's Sports Hall of Fame. (Full article...)

February 23

Donald Forrester Brown (23 February 1890 – 1 October 1916) was a New Zealand recipient of the Victoria Cross, the highest award for valour in the face of the enemy that could be awarded at that time to members of the British and Commonwealth armed forces. Born in Dunedin, Brown was a farmer when the First World War began. In late 1915, he volunteered for service abroad with the New Zealand Expeditionary Force (NZEF) and was posted to the 2nd Battalion, the Otago Infantry Regiment. Fighting on the Western Front, he performed the actions that led to the award of the Victoria Cross in September 1916 during the Battle of Flers–Courcelette, part of the Somme offensive. As he was killed several days later during the Battle of Le Transloy, the award was made posthumously. His Victoria Cross was the second to be awarded to a soldier serving with the NZEF during the war and was the first earned in an action on the Western Front. (Full article...)

February 24

Co-star Linda Griffiths

Overdrawn at the Memory Bank is a 1984 science fiction television film starring Raul Julia and Linda Griffiths (pictured). Based on the 1976 John Varley short story of the same name from the Eight Worlds series, the film takes place in a dystopian future where an employee at a conglomerate, played by Julia, gets trapped inside the company's computer. There he is monitored and later abetted by a character played by Griffiths as he affects the real world. It was co-produced by Canada's RSL Films in Toronto and New York television station WNET. Because of its limited budget, the motion picture was shot on videotape instead of film and was pre-sold to small American cable companies. It premiered on CBC Television in 1984 and was broadcast on American Playhouse in 1985. The film had a mixed reception from critics. Overdrawn at the Memory Bank was featured in the eighth season finale episode of the comedy television series Mystery Science Theater 3000 in 1997. (Full article...)

February 25

The British Housewife (1758)

Martha Bradley (fl. 1740s–1755) was a British cookery book writer. Little is known about her life, except that she published the cookery book The British Housewife in 1756 and worked as a cook for over 30 years in the fashionable spa town of Bath, Somerset. The British Housewife was released as a 42-issue partwork between January and October 1756. It was published in a two-volume book form in 1758, and is more than a thousand pages long. It is likely that Bradley was dead before the partwork was published. The book follows the French style of nouvelle cuisine, distinguishing Bradley from other female cookery book writers at the time, who focused on a British style of food preparation. The work is carefully organised and the recipes taken from other authors are amended, suggesting she was a knowledgeable and experienced cook, able to improve on existing dishes. Because of the length of the book, it was not reprinted until 1996; as a result, few modern writers have written extensively on Bradley or her work. (Full article...)

February 26

Debris from the crashed balloon, July 8, 1947

The Roswell incident is a conspiracy theory which alleges that the 1947 United States Army Air Forces balloon debris recovered near Roswell, New Mexico, was part of a crashed extraterrestrial spacecraft. The debris was from the top secret Project Mogul, which used high-altitude balloons to detect nuclear tests. Roswell Army Air Field personnel, unaware of Mogul, gathered the material and announced the recovery of a "flying disc"; the statement was retracted within a day. To obscure the source of the debris, the army reported that it was a conventional weather balloon. In 1978, retired Air Force officer Jesse Marcel revealed that the weather balloon had been a cover story and speculated that the debris was extraterrestrial. This became the basis for long-lasting and increasingly complex and contradictory UFO conspiracy theories, none of which have any factual basis. The conspiracy narrative has become a common trope in fiction. The town of Roswell promotes itself as a UFO tourism destination. (Full article...)

February 27

Keanu Reeves starred in the film.

John Wick is a 2014 American action thriller film directed by Chad Stahelski and written by Derek Kolstad. Keanu Reeves (pictured) stars as John Wick, a retired hitman who seeks revenge against the men who killed his dog, a final gift from his deceased wife. It also stars Michael Nyqvist, Alfie Allen, Adrianne Palicki, Bridget Moynahan, Dean Winters, Ian McShane, John Leguizamo, and Willem Dafoe. Principal photography began in October 2013, on a $20–$30 million budget, and concluded in December. Stahelski and Leitch focused on long, highly choreographed single takes to convey action. Following a successful marketing campaign, John Wick, which was released on October 24, 2014, became a modest success, grossing $86 million worldwide. It received applause for its style and its action sequences. John Wick is seen as having revitalized the action genre and began a successful franchise which includes four other films, a prequel television series, as well as video games and comic books. (Full article...)

February 28

Sappho (standing) as imagined in 1881

Anactoria is a woman mentioned in the work of the ancient Greek poet Sappho (pictured), who wrote in the late seventh and early sixth centuries BCE. Sappho names Anactoria as the object of her desire in a poem numbered as fragment 16. Another of her poems, fragment 31, is traditionally called the "Ode to Anactoria", though no name appears in it. As portrayed by Sappho, Anactoria is likely to have been an aristocratic follower of hers, of marriageable age. The English poet Algernon Charles Swinburne's "Anactoria" was published in 1866 and is written from the point of view of Sappho, who expresses her lust for the title character in a long, sexually explicit monologue written in rhyming couplets of iambic pentameter. Swinburne's poem created a sensation by openly approaching then-taboo topics such as lesbianism and dystheism. Anactoria later featured in an 1896 play by H. V. Sutherland and in the 1961 poetic series "Three Letters to Anaktoria" by Robert Lowell. (Full article...)