Wikipedia article of the day for March 22, 2021

The Wikipedia article of the day for March 22, 2021 is HMS Princess Royal (1911).
HMS Princess Royal was built for the British Royal Navy before the First World War in response to the Moltke-class battlecruisers of the Imperial German Navy and significantly improved on the speed, armament, and armour of earlier battlecruisers. Laid down in 1912 and commissioned in 1913, Princess Royal served in the Battle of Heligoland Bight a month after the war began. During the Battle of Dogger Bank, Princess Royal scored few hits, although one crippled the German armoured cruiser Blücher. Shortly afterward, she became the flagship of the 1st Battlecruiser Squadron, under the command of Rear-Admiral Osmond Brock. Princess Royal was moderately damaged during the Battle of Jutland and required a month and a half of repairs. Apart from providing distant support during the Second Battle of Heligoland Bight in 1917, the ship spent the rest of the war on uneventful patrols of the North Sea. She was sold for breaking up as scrap in 1922. (This article is part of a featured topic: Battlecruisers of the world.)

Wikipedia article of the day for March 21, 2021

The Wikipedia article of the day for March 21, 2021 is Sirius.
Sirius, designated Alpha Canis Majoris, is the brightest star in the night sky with a visual magnitude of −1.46. It is a close binary star system, consisting of Sirius A, a white main-sequence star, and a faint companion white dwarf, Sirius B, which was originally a massive bluish star that became a red giant before shedding its outer layers and collapsing to a white dwarf. It is one of Earth's near neighbors, at 2.6 parsecs (8.6 light-years). Sirius A is about twice as massive as the Sun and has an absolute magnitude of 1.42. It is 25 times more luminous than the Sun but has a lower luminosity than other bright stars. The system is 200 to 300 million years old. Sirius is known as the "Dog Star", due to its prominence in its constellation, Canis Major. The rising of Sirius marked the flooding of the Nile in Ancient Egypt and the "dog days" of summer for the ancient Greeks, while to the Polynesians it was important for Pacific navigation.

Wikipedia article of the day for March 20, 2021

The Wikipedia article of the day for March 20, 2021 is Duke and Duchess of Windsor's 1937 tour of Germany.
The Duke and Duchess of Windsor's 1937 tour of Germany was opposed by the British government, which feared that Nazi Germany would use the visit for propaganda. After Edward had abdicated the British throne in December 1936, his brother George VI became king. Given the title Duke of Windsor, Edward married Wallis Simpson in June 1937. He appeared to have been sympathetic to Germany in this period and announced his intention to travel there privately to tour factories. He promised the British government that he would keep a low profile, and the tour went ahead between 12 and 23 October. The Duke and Duchess visited factories, many of which were producing materiel for the war effort, and the Duke inspected German troops (pictured). The Windsors dined with prominent Nazis including Joseph Goebbels, Hermann Göring, Joachim von Ribbentrop, and Albert Speer; they also had tea with Adolf Hitler at his house at Berchtesgaden.

Wikipedia article of the day for March 19, 2021

The Wikipedia article of the day for March 19, 2021 is University of Washington station.
University of Washington is a light rail station located on the University of Washington campus in Seattle, Washington, United States. The station is served by Sound Transit's Link light rail system and is the current northern terminus of Line 1. University of Washington station is located adjacent to Husky Stadium and the University of Washington Medical Center. It consists of an underground island platform connected to a surface entrance by elevators and escalators. A pedestrian bridge over Montlake Boulevard connects the station to the University of Washington campus, the Burke–Gilman Trail, and a set of bus stops served by King County Metro and Sound Transit Express routes. Light rail trains serve the station twenty hours a day on most days; the headway between trains is six minutes during peak periods with reduced frequency at other times. The station was built as part of the University Link Extension, which began construction in 2009 and opened on March 19, 2016.

Wikipedia article of the day for March 18, 2021

The Wikipedia article of the day for March 18, 2021 is Wells and Wellington affair.
The Wells and Wellington affair was a dispute involving the Australian Journal of Herpetology, a scientific journal on the study of amphibians and reptiles published beginning in 1981 by the Australian Herpetologists' League. Richard Wells, a student, served as the editor-in-chief of the peer-reviewed periodical, with an editorial board of three researchers. Wells stopped communicating with his board for two years before publishing three unreviewed papers in the journal in 1983 and 1985 which he coauthored with teacher C. Ross Wellington. The papers reorganized the taxonomy of Australia's and New Zealand's amphibians and reptiles, and proposed over 700 changes to their scientific names. The herpetological community brought a case to the ICZN to suppress the new names, but the commission eventually opted not to decide, leaving some of Wells and Wellington's names available. As of 2020, 24 of their specific names remained valid senior synonyms (example pictured).

Wikipedia article of the day for March 17, 2021

The Wikipedia article of the day for March 17, 2021 is O Captain! My Captain!.
"O Captain! My Captain!" is an extended-metaphor poem written by Walt Whitman in 1865 about the death of U.S. president Abraham Lincoln. Well received upon publication, the poem was Whitman's most popular during his lifetime. Whitman was employed by the federal government in Washington, D.C., through much of the Civil War, and, though he never met Lincoln, Whitman felt a connection to him and was greatly moved by his assassination. "My Captain" was first published in The Saturday Press on November 4, 1865, and appeared in Sequel to Drum-Taps later that year. He later included it in the collection Leaves of Grass and recited the poem at several lectures on Lincoln's death. Critical opinion has shifted since the mid-20th century, with scholars deriding its conventionality and unoriginality. In popular culture, the poem experienced renewed attention after it was featured in Dead Poets Society (1989), and is frequently associated with the star of that film, Robin Williams.

Wikipedia article of the day for March 16, 2021

The Wikipedia article of the day for March 16, 2021 is Zino's petrel.
Zino's petrel (Pterodroma madeira) is a species of small seabird, endemic to Madeira. This gadfly petrel is grey above with a dark "W" across the wings. The wings are mainly blackish below, and the belly is white. It is very similar in appearance to Fea's petrel, both being formerly considered to be subspecies of the soft-plumaged petrel, but Zino's was raised to a species on criteria including morphology and mitochondrial DNA. Its breeding areas are a few ledges high in the mountains of Madeira, where it nests in burrows which are visited only at night. The single white egg is incubated by both adults, one sitting while the other feeds on fish and squid at sea. This species is subject to predation by introduced cats and rats, and in the past by humans. Predator control and the removal of grazing animals has enabled the population to recover although it remains listed as endangered on the IUCN Red List. There was a major setback in 2010 when fires killed three adults and 65 percent of the chicks.