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

Alexander Lukashenko

In an ongoing offensive, the Rwandan-supported March 23 Movement captures Goma, the capital of North Kivu province in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Alexander Lukashenko (pictured) is re-elected as the president of Belarus, after banning opposition candidates.
Several artefacts, including the Helmet of Coțofenești, are stolen from the Drents Museum in Assen, the Netherlands.
Micheál Martin becomes Taoiseach of Ireland as the leader of a coalition government.
A fire at a ski resort hotel in Kartalkaya, Turkey, leaves at least 78 people dead and 51 others injured.

Selected anniversaries

January 29: Chinese New Year (2025); Kansas Day (Kansas, United States); Korean New Year (2025); Tết (Vietnam, 2025)

Charles Curtis

757 – An Lushan, leader of a revolt against the Tang dynasty and emperor of Yan, was assassinated in a plot involving his own son, An Qingxu.
946 – The Abbasid caliph, al-Mustakfi, was deposed, going on to spend the rest of his life as a prisoner in the caliphal palace.
1907 – Kaw Nation citizen Charles Curtis (pictured) of Kansas became the first Native American U. S. Senator.
2006 – India's Irfan Pathan became the only bowler to take a Test cricket hat-trick in the opening over of a match.
2017 – A lone gunman carried out a mass shooting at a mosque in Quebec City, Canada, killing six people and injuring up to nineteen others.

Mary Whitwell Hale (b. 1810)
Sara Teasdale (d. 1933)
Elin Rombo (b. 1976)
Colleen McCullough (d. 2015)

More anniversaries:

Did you know...

Phonograph record of "Drizzle"

... that the vocals on "Drizzle" (record pictured), one of the earliest Chinese pop songs, were likened to "the cacophony produced by a hanged cat"?
... that a profile of artist Mark Hearld said his "wrens and squirrels, field mice and owls" help a child care about the planet better than telling them it is burning?
... that the NFL listed the 4th and 26 game as one of the greatest in the first 100 years of its history?
... that the Yiddish poet David Einhorn levelled criticism at other Jewish writers in Berlin whom he accused of being "bourgeois intellectuals" and out-of-touch with their fellow migrants?
... that the Kokusai Ta-Go aircraft was purposely designed for the kamikaze role?
... that LGBTQ synagogues helped shape the American Jewish response to AIDS in the 1980s, even as the disease killed many of their members?
... that Ali-Hajji of Akusha supported the Bolsheviks because he believed that they would implement sharia?
... that the health of prisoners in Australia is impacted by their lack of access to Medicare, the country's otherwise-universal health care system?
... that during hearings for a new TV station in the state of Washington, an engineer collapsed on the witness stand, a radio station owner suffered food poisoning, and his rival's wife was hospitalized?

Today's featured article

Dominik Hašek (born 29 January 1965) is a Czech former ice hockey goaltender. He won the Vezina Trophy six times with the National Hockey League (NHL), the most under the award's current system. In 1998, he became the first goaltender to win the Hart Memorial Trophy twice. During the 1998 Winter Olympics, he led the Czech national ice hockey team to its first Olympic gold medal. In 2002, Hašek became the first European-trained starting goaltender to win the Stanley Cup and set a record for shutouts in a postseason year. He was considered an unorthodox goaltender, with a distinct style that led to him being labeled a "flopper". He holds the highest career save percentage of all time, and is the only goaltender to face the most shots per 60 minutes and have the highest save percentage in the same season. Hašek was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame and is a member of the Czech Ice Hockey Hall of Fame and the IIHF Hall of Fame. His number was retired by the Buffalo Sabres and HC Pardubice. (Full article...)

Recently featured:

Picture of the day

The Duchess of Dantzic is a comic opera, set in Paris, with music by Ivan Caryll and a book and lyrics by Henry Hamilton, based on the play Madame Sans-Gêne by Victorien Sardou and Émile Moreau. Additional lyrics are by Adrian Ross. The story concerns Napoleon and a laundress, Catherine Üpscher, who marries Marshal Lefebvre and becomes a duchess. The opera was first produced in London at the Lyric Theatre in 1903 and ran for 236 performances. Subsequently, it enjoyed a successful New York production at Daly's Theatre and other productions around the world, and it was revived in London and performed regularly by amateur theatre groups, particularly in Britain, until the 1950s. This 1903 poster for the opera's original production was designed by the show's costume designer, Percy Anderson.Poster credit: Percy Anderson; restored by Adam Cuerden

Archive – More featured pictures...