Wikipedia:Main Page history/2017 March 21

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From today's featured article

Neal Dow (March 20, 1804 – October 2, 1897) was an American prohibition advocate and politician. He was elected president of the Maine Temperance Union in 1850, and mayor of Portland the next year. Soon after, largely due to his efforts, the state legislature banned the sale and production of alcohol in what became known as the Maine Law. As mayor, Dow enforced the law with vigor and called for increasingly harsh penalties for violators. In 1855, his opponents rioted and he ordered the state militia to fire on the crowd. One man was killed and several were wounded. After public reaction to the violence turned against him, he chose not to run again for mayor. He was later elected to two terms in the state legislature, but retired after a financial scandal. He joined the Union Army shortly after the outbreak of the American Civil War in 1861 and became a brigadier general. He was wounded at the siege of Port Hudson and later captured. After being exchanged for another officer in 1864, Dow resigned from the military and devoted himself once more to prohibition. In 1880, he headed the Prohibition Party ticket for President of the United States. (Full article...)

Part of the United States presidential election, 1880 series, one of Wikipedia's featured topics.

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South African Defence Force Ensign

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In the news

Chuck Berry

American guitarist, singer, and rock and roll pioneer Chuck Berry (pictured) dies at the age of 90.
A colossal ancient Egyptian statue, discovered in Cairo, is preliminarily identified as depicting pharaoh Psamtik I.
The VVD, led by incumbent Prime Minister Mark Rutte, wins the most seats in the Dutch general election, but the governing coalition loses its majority.
Disputes over a Turkish constitutional referendum trigger a diplomatic incident between Turkey and the Netherlands.
South Korea's Constitutional Court removes President Park Geun-hye from office.

On this day...

March 21: Independence Day in Namibia (1990)

Thomas Cranmer

630 – Byzantine emperor Heraclius restored the True Cross to Jerusalem.
1556 – Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Cranmer (pictured), one of the founders of Anglicanism, was burnt at the stake in Oxford, England, for heresy.
1937 – The Papal encyclical Mit brennender Sorge, condemning antisemitism and criticizing Nazism, was read from the pulpits of all German Catholic churches.
1963 – Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary on Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay, California—one of the world's most notorious and best known prisons—was closed.
1980 – Dallas aired its "A House Divided" episode which led to eight months of international speculation regarding "Who shot J.R.?"

Al Williamson (b. 1931) · Nobuo Uematsu (b. 1959) · Chinua Achebe (d. 2013)

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Montfort Castle is a ruined crusader castle in the Upper Galilee region in northern Israel, about 22 miles (35 km) northeast of the city of Haifa. The site is now a national park inside the Nahal Kziv nature reserve, and a tourist destination.

Photograph: Eran Feldman

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