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

Aga Khan IV

The 49th imam of Nizari Isma'ilism, Aga Khan IV (pictured), dies at the age of 88 and is succeeded by his son, Aga Khan V.
Eleven people are killed in a mass shooting at an adult education centre in Örebro, Sweden.
At the Grammy Awards, "Not Like Us" by Kendrick Lamar wins Record of the Year and Beyoncé's Cowboy Carter wins Album of the Year.
A Learjet 55 crashes into multiple buildings in Philadelphia, United States, killing at least 7 people and injuring 24 others.

Selected anniversaries

February 9: Feast day of Apollonia in Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy

John Quincy Adams

1825 – After no candidate received a majority of electoral votes in the previous year's presidential election, the United States House of Representatives chose John Quincy Adams (pictured) as president in a contingent election.
1945 – World War II: Allied aircraft unsuccessfully attacked a German destroyer in Førde Fjord, Norway.
1950 – U.S. senator Joseph McCarthy accused 205 employees of the State Department of being communists, sparking a period of strong anti-communist sentiment known as McCarthyism.
1975 – The spacecraft and crew of the Soviet Soyuz 17 mission returned to earth after 29 days in orbit at the Salyut 4 station.
2020 – Japanese figure skater Yuzuru Hanyu won the Four Continents Championships to become the only man to complete a Super Slam.

Adele Spitzeder (b. 1832)
Ella D. Barrier (d. 1945)
Vladimir Guerrero (b. 1975)
Margareta Hallin (d. 2020)

More anniversaries:

Did you know...

Macrobdella decora

... that some North American swimming spots have had to be closed because Macrobdella decora (pictured) posed such a hazard to bathers?
... that the majority of Selected Ambient Works Volume II was supposedly composed through lucid dreaming?
... that Karl Malte von Heinz designed the Vatican, Pakistani, Yugoslav and Thai diplomatic missions in India?
... that the anarchist group Los Solidarios assassinated the leader of the Catalan pistoleros, the governor of Biscay, and the archbishop of Zaragoza?
... that photographer Peter Miller stated in 2014 that the "Vermont Way" of grumbling and every so often remembering that "we live in beauty" was "coming to an end"?
... that a group of Jewish refugees continued work on their Yiddish encyclopedia after fleeing from Germany and France?
... that the unlicensed Willy's Chocolate Experience in Scotland led to a crossover event between the American television series Abbott Elementary and It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia?
... that Mufasa shared the same voice as Darth Vader?
... that Dez did not actually catch it?

Today's featured article

The Japanese battleship Tosa 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 tons (40,540 tonnes) 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.)

Recently featured:

Picture of the day

Fragaria vesca, commonly called the wild strawberry among other names, is a perennial herbaceous plant in the rose family that grows naturally throughout much of the Northern Hemisphere. The wild strawberry produces edible fruits, which have been consumed by humans since the Stone Age. The fruit is strongly flavored, and is still collected and grown for domestic use and on a small scale commercially as an ingredient for commercial jam, sauces, liqueurs, cosmetics and alternative medicine. This focus-stacked photograph shows a wild strawberry fruit in a garden in Bamberg, Germany.Photograph Reinhold Möller

Archive – More featured pictures...