User:Allard

Hello and a warm welcome to all my fellow Wikipedians. How nice of you to drop in to see who I am!

Morning>

Wikipedia & me:

How I discovered Wikipedia, I do not remember. But from being a reader I slowly became a contributor. Although I don't work that much on Wikipedia I do see myself as a Wikipedian. I don't go searching on Wikipedia what I can edit next, I edit what I find and want to do. This means I add and mainly improve a lot of small things and only rarely I make large edits.

My work:

My list of contributions

Articles I've started on Wikipedia:

Images I made for Wikipedia:

Article guide:

A list of articles worth looking at, if one can find them:

And there's always the Random article

And to all citizens of the European Union, please read this: Oneseat.eu

News

David Szalay

David Szalay (pictured) is awarded the Booker Prize for his novel Flesh.
American molecular biologist James Watson, co-discoverer of the structure of DNA, dies at the age of 97.
UPS Airlines Flight 2976 crashes after takeoff from Louisville, Kentucky, United States, killing 14 people.
Typhoon Kalmaegi leaves more than 240 people dead in the Philippines.

Selected anniversaries

November 14: World Diabetes Day; Dobruja Day in Romania

Eugene Burton Ely taking off from USS Birmingham

1680 – German astronomer Gottfried Kirch discovered the Great Comet of 1680, the first comet to be discovered by telescope.
1910 – Aviator Eugene Burton Ely performed the first takeoff from a ship (pictured), flying from a makeshift deck on USS Birmingham in Hampton Roads, Virginia.
1967 – American physicist Theodore Maiman was given a patent for his ruby laser systems, the world's first laser.
1970 – Southern Airways Flight 932, chartered by the Marshall University football team, crashed into a hill near Ceredo, West Virginia, killing all 75 people on board.
2010 – Red Bull Racing's Sebastian Vettel won the Drivers' Championship after winning the final race of the season, becoming the youngest Formula One champion.

Fanny Mendelssohn (b. 1805)
Claude Monet (b. 1840)
Mary Greyeyes (b. 1920)
Neil Heywood (d. 2011)

More anniversaries:

Did you know...

Fort George

... that Fort George (pictured) was the execution site of Maurice Bishop, the prime minister of Grenada?
... that choreographer Nat Horne's father, a Baptist minister, opposed dancing, and Horne began his dance training by sneaking out of Saturday-night prayer meetings?
... that the television drama This Thriving Land revived public interest in Chinese sage?
... that Red Seidelson worked as a dentist at the same time he played in the NFL?
... that in 1982 HMS Junella carried a naval mine from the Falkland Islands to Great Britain on her deck, covered by a wet mattress to keep the explosives cool?
... that Indonesia's ambassador to the United Nations Umar Hadi co-produced a movie during his tenure as consul general in Los Angeles?
... that the Mongol forces at the Chem River Battle used carts with iron-shod wheels to handle the rocky terrain?
... that Bijal P. Trivedi wrote on how cystic fibrosis went from being a "death sentence" for children to becoming a treatable condition due to new drugs that brought "weeping with joy"?
... that the school of Corpus Christi Church educated at least eleven sets of twins during the 1953 school year?

Today's featured article

Elinor Fettiplace (c.1570 – in or after 1647) was an English cookery book writer. Probably born in Pauntley, Gloucestershire, into an upper-class land-owning farming family, she married into the well-connected Fettiplace family and moved to a manor house in the Vale of White Horse, Berkshire. In common with many ladies of the Elizabethan era, Fettiplace wrote a manuscript book with details of recipes for dishes and meals, medical remedies and tips for running the household. She dated the work 1604, but it is possible that she began writing it several years earlier, when she was still living with her mother. The book was passed down through her family, initially to her niece, until it was handed to the husband of the twentieth-century writer Hilary Spurling. Fettiplace's husband died in 1615; she moved back to Gloucestershire and married a local man, Edward Rogers, who died in 1623. She lived until at least 1647. (Full article...)

Recently featured:

Picture of the day

The Czapski Palace is a palatial complex in the center of Warsaw, Poland. It was constructed in about 1686 for the country's Catholic primate, Michał Stefan Radziejowski, using a design by Dutch-born Polish architect and engineer Tylman van Gameren. The palace was reconstructed between 1712 and 1721, and acquired its present rococo character in 1752–65. The building has been home to various notable individuals, including artist Zygmunt Vogel, composer Frédéric Chopin, and poets Zygmunt Krasiński and Cyprian Norwid. It now houses the Academy of Fine Arts. This photograph shows the front façade of the Czapski Palace's main building.Photograph credit: Adrian Grycuk

Archive – More featured pictures...