Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2014-05-21/Featured content

This Signpost "Featured content" report covers material promoted from 11 May through 17 May.

Featured articles
Thirteen featured articles were promoted this week.


 * Yellowhammer (nominated by Jimfbleak) A small Eurasian bird, with males having a bright yellow head and underparts, it was once extremely common, inspiring works by Robert Burns, Beethoven and Messiaen, among others.
 * D. Djajakusuma (nominated by Crisco 1492) An Indonesian filmmaker who worked in a variety of genres, but specialised in realist or semi-realist films, usually with an educational message buried therein. He later promoted traditional Indonesian art forms, and is credited with saving the lenong theatre.
 * Morchella rufobrunnea (nominated by Sasata) An edible morel (a type of mushroom) from the west coast of the United States and Mexico, it was only officially described as its own species in 1998, before then being thought to be part of Morchella deliciosa.
 * Caelum (nominated by StringTheory11) We are lucky to have some very good astronomy authors working on the eighty-eight constellations, mainly the ones of the southern sky at the moment. Caelum, the chisel, was introduced in the 1750s as part of the early efforts to divide up the newly documented (by Europeans) southern sky into constellations, with many implements of industry, science, and art suddenly appearing in the heavens.
 * Warlugulong (nominated by hamiltonstone) A giant painting by Australian aboriginal artist Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri, considered "one of the most important 20th-century Australian paintings". It illustrates several "dreamings" (aboriginal legends), with the centre one telling the tale of Lungkata, the creator of the first bushfire.
 * Metalloid (nominated by Sandbh) This is one of those chemical terms that everyone thinks they've understood after studying it, but, as it is meant to cover things that have properties between metals and nonmetals, can actually be used to cover large swaths more than generally understood by some authors at some times. The article does a good job of explaining this ambiguity.
 * George Robey (nominated by Cassianto) An English music-hall singer, noted for his performance of the song "If You Were the Only Girl (In the World)" during the first World War, and for his portrayal of pantomime dames (a British Christmas tradition, related to the Victorian burlesque, which includes a number of crossdressed parts).
 * Sultanate of Singora (nominated by Singora) A port city in southern Thailand, founded in 1605, and destroyed in 1680, and the predecessor of the modern town of Songkhla. Founded by a Persian, Dato Mogol, flourished during the reign of his son, who declared independence from the then-rulers of Thailand, the Ayutthaya Kingdom, and was eventually crushed in the reign of Dato's grandson.
 * A Contract with God (nominated by Curly Turkey) A cycle of short comics by Will Eisner set around a New York tenement in the Bronx, this book is credited with popularizing the term "graphic novel".
 * Grus (constellation) (nominated by Casliber) Another southern constellation, raised to featured status by another of our excellent astronomy team, Grus, the Crane, was actually divided off from Piscis Austrinus, an ancient constellation documented by Ptolemy. This was common at the time, although many such attempts to create constellations are now ignored, such as Frederici Honores, Noctua, or Triangulum Minus.
 * Russian battleship Poltava (1894) (nominated by Sturmvogel 66) One of the Imperial Russian Navy's three Petropavlovsk-class pre-dreadnought battleships, she was built in the Galernii Island shipyard between 1892 and 1894. She served in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–05, where she fought in the Battle of Port Arthur, was damaged in the Battle of the Yellow Sea, and sunk during the Siege of Port Arthur in December 1904. Raised by the Japanese and rechristened the Tango after the war, she fought in World War I against the Germans at the Siege of Tsingtao. She was sold back to the Russians in 1916, upon which time she was renamed the Chesma. During the Russian Civil War she was captured by the British and used as a prison hulk, was abandoned, recaptured by the Russians in 1919, and was finally scrapped in 1924.
 * Æthelred, Lord of the Mercians (nominated by Dudley Miles) In the early 9th century, England was divided into several kingdoms, but these were almost all destroyed by the Vikings, and by the end of the century, Wessex was dominant under Alfred the Great. Æthelred cooperated with Alfred in fighting the Vikings, and accepted his lordship, an important step towards the unification of England in the 10th century.
 * Pather Panchali (nominated by Dwaipayan) A pioneering Bengali film from 1955 which tells the tale of a family living in poverty, the problems caused by this, and the small joys snatched anyway. Shot on a limited budget with amateur actors, it premièred at New York's Museum of Modern Art and met with an enthusiastic reception in Calcutta. It won an award at the 1956 Cannes Film Festival, and is considered a classic, appearing on numerous "best films" lists.

Featured pictures
Sixteen featured pictures were promoted this week.
 * Pena National Palace (created by CEphoto, Uwe Aranas, nominated by Tomer T) One of the Seven Wonders of Portugal, and a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the Pena National Palace is considered one of the best expressions of 19th-century Romanticism in architecture in the world. Based around a ruin destroyed in the Great Lisbon Earthquake of 1755, it was rebuilt between 1842 and 1854 at the desire of King Ferdinand II, who had become interested in the site and acquired the land before ascending the throne. The king requested vault arches, and mediæval, and Islamic elements to be incorporated into the design, and himself designed the ornate window on the main façade.
 * Currencies of the Connecticut Colony,  Delaware Colony, the Province of Georgia, the Province of Maryland, the Province of Massachusetts Bay, the Province of New Hampshire, the Province of New Jersey, the  Province of New York, the Province of North Carolina, the Province of Pennsylvania, the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, the Province of South Carolina, and the Colony of Virginia  (from the  National Numismatic Collection of the Smithsonian Institution; prepared and nominated by Godot13) A set, one from each colony, of early American currency from the National Numismatic Collection of the Smithsonian Institution.
 * In the Conservatory (created by Édouard Manet, nominated by Armbrust) A beautiful, high-resolution scan of a painting by Manet considered, at the time, surprisingly conservative for him: there is no random nudity, nor any reason for it to cause a scandal. In the Conservatory depicts Manet's friends, the Guillemets, in the conservatory of the house at 70 Rue d'Amsterdam that Manet was then using as a studio. The detachment that defines the painting - husband separated from wife; foreground from background; viewer from the painting's subjects - forms the major focus of modern interpretations of the work.
 * An Interior (created by Mary Ellen Best, nominated by Adam Cuerden) Mary Ellen Best (1809–1891) was a female painter noted for her detailed watercolour depictions of domestic life and interiors, that serve as very useful documentation of Yorkshire life at the time. This painting shows a room that has been converted into a study, a simple scene, but beautifully realised.

Featured topics
One featured topic was promoted this week.
 * Maya Angelou autobiographies (nominated by Christine (Figureskatingfan)) Not only are all seven of acclaimed African-American author and poet Maya Angelou's autobiographies the subject of featured articles, but an article on the themes within them is also featured, and her bibliography is a featured list. Impressive work!

The Featured Picture Set of United States Colonial Currency