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Today's featured article

San Francisco, California is the fourth-largest city in California and the fourteenth-largest in the United States, with a 2005 population of 739,426. It is located on the tip of the San Francisco Peninsula and has traditionally been the focal point of the San Francisco Bay Area. San Francisco is the second most densely populated major city in the United States. In 1776, the Spanish colonized the place that was to become San Francisco, establishing a fort at the Golden Gate and a mission named for Francis of Assisi. With the advent of the California Gold Rush in 1848, the city entered a period of rapid growth. After being devastated by the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, San Francisco was quickly rebuilt and is today one of the most recognizable cities in the world. San Francisco is renowned for its months-long episodes of fog, steep rolling hills, the eclectic mix of Victorian and modern architecture, and its peninsular location surrounded on three sides by the Pacific Ocean and San Francisco Bay. Famous hallmarks and landmarks include the Golden Gate Bridge, Alcatraz Island, the cable cars, the Transamerica Pyramid, and Chinatown. (more...)

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Did you know...

From Wikipedia's newest articles:

...that illiterate American slave quiltmaker Harriet Powers sold her now-museum-quality quilts (pictured) in the 1880s for only a couple of dollars?
...that the Fairfield Osborn Preserve is home to a great variety of fauna including one of the world's largest salamanders?
...that the Pungoteague River Light was the shortest-lived screwpile lighthouse on the Chesapeake Bay, and may have been the shortest-lived lighthouse in the United States?
...that the Pariser Platz in Berlin is named after the French capital in memory of Napoleon's defeat at the Battle of Leipzig in 1813?
...that 17 days after the Germans invaded Poland in 1939, the Soviet Union joined the invasion, ensuring the fall of the Second Polish Republic?

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In the news

Ségolène Royal (pictured) wins the Socialist Party's nomination to run for President of France in next year's election; she becomes France's first-ever female presidential candidate representing a major party.
Joseph Kabila is declared winner of the election for the presidency of the Democratic Republic of Congo. His opponent, Jean-Pierre Bemba, alleges fraud.
The Parliament of South Africa votes to legalize same-sex marriage.
Nadarajah Raviraj, a human rights lawyer and legislator from the Tamil National Alliance, is assassinated in Colombo, Sri Lanka.
A new Constitution of Kyrgyzstan adopted by the Joghorku Keneš is signed into law by President Kurmanbek Bakiyev.

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On this day...

November 17: International Students' Day

1558 - Elizabeth I (pictured) ascended the English Throne.
1720 - Pirate captain Calico Jack and his entire crew except Anne Bonny and Mary Read were hanged.
1869 - The Suez Canal, linking the Mediterranean Sea with the Red Sea, was inaugurated in an elaborate ceremony.
1950 - Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, was enthroned as Tibet's head of state at the age of fifteen.
1969 - The SALT I negotiations between the Soviet Union and the United States began in Helsinki.
1989 - A student demonstration in Prague was quelled by riot police, sparking the Velvet Revolution aimed at overthrowing the Czechoslovakian communist government.

Recent days: November 16 – November 15 – November 14

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Today's featured picture

Migrant Mother, Dorothea Lange's 1936 photograph of Florence Owens Thompson and her daughters in Nipomo, California, became the most famous image of the Great Depression in the United States. It is one of the classic photographs of the 20th century, and is now an icon of resilience in the face of adversity. In the 1930s, the FSA employed several photographers to document the effects of the Great Depression on the population of America. Many of the photographs can also be seen as propaganda images to support the U.S. government's policy distributing support to the worst affected, poorer areas of the country.

Photo credit: Dorothea Lange
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This Wikipedia is written in English. Started in 2001, it currently contains 1,488,164 articles. Many other Wikipedias are available; the largest are listed below.