Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2014-04-30/Featured content

This Signpost "Featured Content" report covers material promoted from 20 April 2014 through 26 April 2014.

Featured articles
Four featured articles were promoted this week.
 * Operation Flavius (nominated by HJ Mitchell) A controversial British SAS operation in Gibraltar, in which three members of the IRA were gunned down, despite being unarmed, due to suspicion they were involved in a plan to bomb the British military. Though the SAS were initially cleared of all wrongdoing, in the European Court of Human Rights, the way the operation was managed was found to make the IRA members' death inevitable, violating their human rights.
 * Jim Thome (nominated by Go Phightins!) To quote the nominator, "Jim Thome was my favorite player growing up watching baseball, and about 18 months ago, I was determined that he was going to have a fantastic Wikipedia article. Three months later, it finally achieved good article status. Last July, I nominated it for featured status, and its first nomination failed. Since then, I have sought feedback not only from the two editors who reviewed it at the first nomination, but from a few other baseball editors, and I feel it is much improved." The reviewers agreed: The article is now featured, and an excellent, detailed biography.
 * A Cure for Pokeritis (nominated by Squeamish Ossifrage) A 1912 silent film comedy starring John Bunny and Flora Finch, telling the story of a husband whose inability to give up poker upsets his wife, until she finally takes drastic measures. We have the full film on video, so watch it yourself!
 * Mom & Me & Mom (nominated by Christine) The most recent entry in Maya Angelou's highly praised autobiography series, Mom & Me & Mom goes back over her life, filling in gaps, and explaining her mother's actions, from her abandonment of Maya and her brother to the reconciliation and formation of a tight bond of support between the two.

Featured lists
Three featured lists were promoted this week.
 * List of National Football League season receiving yards leaders (nominated by Toa Nidhiki05) Not all of us are good at every subject. As such, asking me to explain a list describing leaders in a rather complicated American football statistic is dangerous, but, as I understand this, when a ball is tossed to someone else in American football, if it's thrown forwards, it's considered a passing play, and this can be for various distances forwards. The total number of yards passed forwards to and caught by a specific person in a season is considered the receiving yards statistic for that person, which is one of the standard statistics calculated for American football players at the end of the season. This list shows, for each season, which one player had the highest number. There's a reason I usually leave sport articles and lists to someone else.
 * Aamir Khan filmography (nominated by Krimuk90) Aamir Khan is an Indian film actor, producer, and director, amongst other things. Starting his career with a bit part at the age of eight, in his adult life he worked as assistant director and in small roles until his first leading role the well-received Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak (1988), which led to prominent roles in many more films, eventually allowing him to set up his own production company.
 * List of international cricket centuries by Virat Kohli (nominated by Vensatry) A cricket century is scoring a hundred runs or more in a single game, a feat of both endurance and skill. Indian cricketer Virat Kohli has achieved an impressive twenty-five centuries in his career to date.

Featured pictures
Sixteen featured pictures were promoted this week.
 * "Aries and Musca Borealis", "Taurus", "Gemini", "Cancer", "Leo Major and Leo Minor ", "Virgo", "Libra", "Scorpio", "Sagittarius  and Corona Australis, Microscopium, and Telescopium", and "Taurus Poniatowski, Serpentarius, Scutum Sobiesky, and Serpens" (created by Sidney Hall and Richard Rouse Bloxam, after Alexander Jamieson, restored and nominated by Adam Cuerden) Ten plates from Urania's Mirror, a series of star charts with punctured holes, meant to be held up to the light in order to reveal a depiction of the stars in the night sky. This, by the way, puts the restorer's 2014 work at over 1% of all current featured pictures, a feat that, so far as we're aware, is only so far matched by Godot13 for this year (although, unfortunately, this wasn't realized at the time he did it).
 * Chital stag browsing (created by Yathin S Krishnappa, nominated by Hafspajen) Browsing is the behaviour of eating high-growing vegetation, such as tree leaves, as seen by this chital deer in Nagarhole National Park, India.
 * The Fall of Phaeton (created by Peter Paul Rubens, nominated by Brandmeister) Phaeton, the son of Apollo who insisted on driving the sun across the sky (only to end up dead because of his hubris), was an obvious subject for the genre of mythological painting, and this fine early work (c. 1604/5) by Peter Paul Rubens shows what could be done with it.
 * Groundhog (created by Simon Pierre Barrette, nominated by Tomer T) An adorable picture of a groundhog, also called a woodchuck or whistle-pig.
 * Thurston the Great Magician (created by Strobridge Litho. Co., restored and nominated by Adam Cuerden) Howard Thurston was one of the most popular magicians of the Golden Age of magic in America, specializing in card tricks. We have seen him at featured pictures once before, demonstrating for the "first" time in the West (not actually the first time) a stage version of the East Indian Rope Trick.
 * Sari temple (created and nominated by Crisco 1492) Candi Sari, or Sari Temple, is a eighth-century Buddhist temple in Indonesia, here seen in absolutely ridiculously high resolution, thanks to stitching together of many separate photographs. Believed to have started life as a Buddhist monastery, or vihara, it was rediscovered in the 1920s, and was reconstructed by 1930.
 * Mammy's Cupboard Restaurant, Natchez, Mississippi (created by Carol M. Highsmith, nominated by Crisco 1492) Mammy's Cupboard Restaurant is an example of gimmick architecture. Shaped like the traditional depiction of a mammy archetype (a black woman, often a slave, who looked after white children as a governess), her skirt serves as a room which houses the aforementioned restaurant. Created to cash in on the popularity of the archetype after the film Gone with the Wind, her appearance was revised, lightening the skin, during the Civil Rights Movement. It was photographed by Carol M. Highsmith, a photographer who spent her life documenting the oddities and quirks of disappearing American architectural styles.