Wikipedia:Today's featured list/February 2022


February 4

Sonja Henie
Sonja Henie

Eighty-three individual athletes won medals at the 1928 Winter Olympics, which were held in St. Moritz, Switzerland, from February 11 to February 18, 1928. A total of 464 athletes from 25 National Olympic Committees (NOCs) participated in the 1928 Winter Olympics. Athletes representing Norway far surpassed their competitors in the medal count, winning fifteen medals to the six won by the nearest NOC, the United States. Twelve of the participating NOCs secured at least one medal, and among these, six NOCs won at least one gold medal. Sonja Henie (pictured) of Norway won the gold medal in the women's individual figure skating competition, the first of three consecutive Winter Olympics at which she would do so. Competing with an injured knee, Swedish figure skater Gillis Grafström won the men's individual competition at the third consecutive Winter Games. Norwegian speed skater Bernt Evensen topped the medal count, winning one gold, one silver, and one bronze medal. (Full list...)


February 7

Fran Wilde
Fran Wilde

The Andre Norton Nebula Award for Middle Grade and Young Adult Fiction is an annual award presented by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) to the author of the best young adult or middle grade science fiction or fantasy book published in the United States in the preceding year. It is named to honor prolific science-fiction and fantasy author Andre Norton (1912–2005), and it was established by then SFWA president Catherine Asaro and the SFWA Young Adult Fiction committee and announced on February 20, 2005. Andre Norton Award nominees and winners are chosen by members of SFWA, though the authors of the nominees do not need to be members. Works are nominated each year by members in a period around December 15 through January 31, and the six works that receive the most nominations then form the final ballot, with additional nominees possible in the case of ties. During the 16 nomination years, 85 authors have had works nominated, of whom 15 have won. Fran Wilde (pictured) is the only author to have won twice, out of two nominations. Holly Black and Scott Westerfeld have had the most nominations at four—with Black winning once and Westerfeld yet to win—followed by Sarah Beth Durst with three nominations without winning. (Full list...)


February 11

Elizabeth I
Elizabeth I

The alumni of Jesus College, one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England, include politicians, lawyers, bishops, poets, and academics. Some went on to become fellows of the college; fourteen students later became principals of the college. Jesus College was founded in 1571 by Queen Elizabeth I (pictured) at the request of the Welsh clergyman Hugh Price, who was Treasurer of St Davids Cathedral in Pembrokeshire. From the world of politics, the college's alumni include two prime ministers (Harold Wilson of the United Kingdom and Kevin Rudd of Australia), Jamaica's chief minister and first premier (Norman Washington Manley), and a speaker of the House of Commons (Sir William Williams). The list of lawyers include one lord chancellor (Lord Sankey) and one law lord (Lord du Parcq). The list of clergy includes three archbishops of Wales (A. G. Edwards, Glyn Simon and Gwilym Williams). (Full list...)


February 14

The filmography of English actor Robert Bathurst comprises both film and television roles spanning 30 years. Bathurst made his acting debut for television in 1982 in "The Black Adder", the never-broadcast pilot episode for the BBC sitcom Blackadder, though his character of Prince Henry was recast when the series The Black Adder was commissioned. Into the 1990s, Bathurst gained wider recognition from television audiences, first as writer Mark Taylor in Joking Apart from 1991 to 1995, then as David Marsden in Cold Feet from 1997 to 2003 and again from 2016. In the early 2000s, Bathurst starred in a succession of one-off television dramas before taking the role of British prime minister Michael Phillips in the sitcom My Dad's the Prime Minister. Throughout the rest of the decade, he appeared in episodes of New Tricks, Agatha Christie's Poirot, and Kingdom, and played Mark Thatcher in Coup!, a fact-based drama. Alongside his television and film roles, Bathurst has developed a theatre career. He appeared in several Cambridge Footlights Revues between 1977 and 1981, and co-directed the 1978 Footlights pantomime with Martin Bergman. (Full list...)


February 18

There are 27 listed buildings in the rural area of Runcorn, a small industrial town in the borough of Halton in Cheshire, England. In the United Kingdom, a listed building is a building or other structure officially designated as being of special architectural, historical, or cultural significance. Three of the buildings in the area are classified as Grade II*, and the others are at Grade II; there are no buildings in Grade I. The ages of the structures on the list range from the ruin of Clifton Hall, built in 1565, to the telephone kiosk in Daresbury, which dates from the 1930s. The three Grade II* listed buildings include the only church in the list (pictured) and two former mansion houses. The church and one of the mansion houses are in Daresbury, and the other mansion house is in Moore. Daresbury also contains a former sessions house. (Full list...)


February 21

The seven symphonies of the Finnish composer Jean Sibelius, written between 1899 and 1924, are the core of his oeuvre and stalwarts of the standard concert repertoire. Many of classical music's conductor–orchestra partnerships have recorded the complete set, colloquially known as the "Sibelius cycle". Although early advocates such as Robert Kajanus, Sir Thomas Beecham, and Serge Koussevitzky had conducted many of Sibelius's symphonies for gramophone in the 1930s and 1940s, none of these Sibelians recorded all seven. The earliest complete traversal dates to 1953, four years before the composer's death on 20 September 1957; it is by Sixten Ehrling and the Stockholm Radio Orchestra, recorded from 1952–1953 for the Swedish label Metronome Records (released by Mercury Records in the United States). Ehrling had outpaced Anthony Collins and the London Symphony Orchestra, whose cycle—recorded from 1952–1955 on Decca Records—was concurrent with Ehrling's but arrived second. Since the pioneering examples of Ehrling and Collins, the Sibelius cycle has been recorded an additional 42 times as of July 2021. (Full list...)


February 25

Irises, in the family Iridaceae (from the Greek for 'rainbow')
Irises, in the family Iridaceae (from the Greek for 'rainbow')

The names of plant families are mainly derived from Latin or Greek words or from personal names, with the name of the original type genus defining the root of the family name. Since the first edition of Carl Linnaeus's Species Plantarum in 1753, plants have been assigned one epithet or name for their species and one name for their genus, a grouping of related species. These are in turn grouped into families, and all the plants in one family are more closely related to each other than to plants in any other family. Seed-bearing families are listed in Plants of the World by Maarten J. M. Christenhusz, Michael F. Fay and Mark W. Chase, and two updated families in Plants of the World Online. (Full list...)


February 28

McNichols Arena
McNichols Arena

The highest-scoring regular-season game in National Basketball Association (NBA) history is the triple-overtime game between the Detroit Pistons and the Denver Nuggets on December 13, 1983, played at McNichols Arena (pictured) in Denver. The two teams combined to score 370 points, with the Pistons defeating the Nuggets 186–184. An NBA-record four players scored more than 40 points in the game, including the Nuggets' Kiki Vandeweghe with a game-high 51. The highest-scoring regular-season game in regulation was between the Golden State Warriors and the Denver Nuggets on November 2, 1990. In that game, Golden State defeated Denver 162–158. The highest-scoring playoff game is the double-overtime game between the Portland Trail Blazers and the Phoenix Suns on May 11, 1992. The two teams combined to score 304 points, with the Trail Blazers defeating the Suns 153–151. The Suns' Kevin Johnson scored a game-high 35 points, with 12 other players also scoring in double figures. (Full list...)