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

Anura Kumara Dissanayake

In Lebanon, Israeli airstrikes against Hezbollah kill at least 558 people and injure more than 1,835 others.
The Chess Olympiad concludes with India winning both the open and women's events.
Anura Kumara Dissanayake (pictured) is elected President of Sri Lanka.
At least 77 people are killed and more than 255 others are injured in an Islamist militant attack on Mali's capital, Bamako.

Selected anniversaries

September 25

Kaweah Gap, Sequoia National Park

844 – Viking expansion: A Viking fleet arrived near Seville, then part of the Emirate of Córdoba, and began a raid of the city that was eventually repelled by Muslim defenders.
1790 – Peking opera was born with the introduction of Hui opera to Beijing by the "Four Great Anhui Troupes" in honour of the Qianlong Emperor's 80th birthday.
1890 – Sequoia National Park (pictured) was established to conserve giant sequoia trees in an area affected by logging in the southern Sierra Nevada in California.
1983 – In one of the largest prison escapes in British history, 38 Provisional Irish Republican Army prisoners hijacked a meals lorry and broke out of HM Prison Maze in County Antrim, Northern Ireland.

Harald Hardrada (d. 1066)
John Lymburn (b. 1880)
Marian Breland Bailey (d. 2001)
Wang Bingzhang (d. 2005)

More anniversaries:

Did you know...

Saint Ludger healing Bernlef

... that according to tradition Saint Ludger healed the Frisian bard Bernlef of his blindness (pictured) and taught him to play psalms on his harp?
... that light travelled 1.06 billion light-years from a trio of galaxies in the constellation of Cancer, where three supermassive black holes were colliding?
... that Nicholas Carlini showed that ChatGPT could leak personal information?
... that Takara's Treasure was created because its artist wanted to draw a story about a boy who speaks with a dialect?
... that in addition to having been a centre for local involvement in Chinese politics, the Kuomintang Building in Vancouver has hosted social events including a wedding reception?
... that Ron Tiavaasue was born in Samoa, grew up in New Zealand, played college football in the United States, and now plays professional football in Canada?
... that the concept of genocide was introduced in the 1944 book Axis Rule in Occupied Europe?
... that Michael Kettle received an award at the age of 80 for his work as a cricket groundskeeper?
... that Madonna once operated an elevator at Terrace on the Park?

Today's featured article

SMS Helgoland was a dreadnought battleship of the Imperial German Navy. Her design improved from the Nassau class, including an increase in the bore diameter of the main guns. Her keel was laid down at the Howaldtswerke shipyards in Kiel; she was launched on 25 September 1909, and commissioned on 23 August 1911. During World War I the ship participated in several sweeps into the North Sea as the covering force for the battlecruisers of the I Scouting Group. She saw limited duty in the Baltic Sea against the Russian Navy, including serving as part of a support force during the Battle of the Gulf of Riga in August 1915. Helgoland was present at the Battle of Jutland from 31 May to 1 June 1916, though she was located in the center of the German line of battle and not as heavily engaged as the ships in the lead. She was ceded to Great Britain after the war and broken up for scrap in the early 1920s. Her coat of arms is preserved in the Bundeswehr Military History Museum in Dresden. (Full article...)

Recently featured:

Picture of the day

La Promenade is an early Impressionist painting by the French artist Pierre-Auguste Renoir, created in 1870. The oil-on-canvas work depicts a young couple on an excursion outside a city, walking on a woodland path. Influenced by the Rococo Revival style during the Second French Empire, the work reflects the older style and themes of eighteenth-century artists like Jean-Honoré Fragonard and Antoine Watteau. It also shows the influence of Claude Monet on Renoir's new approach to painting. La Promenade now hangs in the Getty Center in Los Angeles, California.Painting credit: Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Archive – More featured pictures...