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From today's featured article

São Paulo was a dreadnought battleship in the Brazilian Navy, the second of two ships in the Minas Geraes class. Launched in 1909 and commissioned a year later, São Paulo was soon involved in the Revolt of the Lash, in which crews on four Brazilian warships mutinied over poor pay and harsh punishments for even minor offenses. In 1922 the ship fired its guns in anger for the first time, attacking a fort that had been taken during the Tenente revolts. Two years later, mutineers took control of the ship and sailed to Montevideo where they obtained asylum. In the 1930s, São Paulo was passed over for modernization. When Brazil entered the Second World War, the ship sailed to the port of Recife and remained there as the port's main defense for the duration of the war. Stricken from the naval register in 1947, the dreadnought remained as a training vessel until 1951, when it was taken under tow to be scrapped in the United Kingdom. The tow lines broke during a strong gale in November when the ships were 150 nmi (280 km; 170 mi) north of the Azores, and São Paulo was lost. (Full article...)

Part of the Minas Geraes-class battleships series, one of Wikipedia's featured topics.

Recently featured:

• Canadian Indian residential school system
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Did you know...

Shallenberger's 1888 meter

• ... that Oliver B. Shallenberger invented the first successful electric meter (pictured), predecessor to the modern meter used today?
• ... that Ivo van Hove wrote and directed the 2014 play The Fountainhead, turning Ayn Rand's 1943 epic novel into a four-hour-plus production?
• ... that Mollie McGeown set up the first dialysis unit in Northern Ireland?
• ... that the whole range of the Mindanao mountain rat is within a single protected area?
• ... that Mozambican politician Ivone Soares escaped death in September 2016 when her would-be assassin's weapon jammed?
• ... that it took a posthumously-sent letter from Terry Pratchett to convince Neil Gaiman to create a Good Omens TV series without him?
• ... that Johannes Kalitzke adapted an Edgar Allan Poe novel into an opera whose score "could be a musical representation of the world of Hieronymus Bosch"?
• ... that an entomologist cried "Aha!" when he discovered a new genus of Australian wasp, and that became its name?

In the news

Carles Puigdemont

• Typhoon Tembin sweeps through the southern Philippines, killing more than two hundred people and leaving dozens of others missing.
• In the Catalan election, pro-independence parties, spearheaded by the exiled Carles Puigdemont (pictured), secure a majority.
• Sebastián Piñera is elected President of Chile for a second time.
• In the United States, an Amtrak Cascades passenger train derails in DuPont, Washington, killing three people and injuring more than seventy others.
• Incumbent Juan Orlando Hernández is declared the winner of the Honduran presidential election, with the Organization of American States calling for a new vote amidst widespread irregularities.

Recent deaths:

• Maurice Hayes
• June Rowlands
• Ken Catchpole
• Bruce McCandless II

On this day...

December 27

Charles Darwin

• 1521 – Three men of the Radical Reformation arrived in Wittenberg, Saxony, and caused an unrest that required the release of Martin Luther from custody to quell.
• 1831 – Aboard HMS Beagle, Charles Darwin (pictured) left Plymouth, England, on what became a historic expedition to South America that made his name as a naturalist.
• 1922 – The Imperial Japanese Navy commissioned Hōshō, the world's first purpose-built aircraft carrier.
• 1997 – Loyalist Volunteer Force leader Billy Wright was assassinated in the HM Prison Maze by members of the Irish National Liberation Army.
• 2007 – Riots erupted in Mombasa, Kenya, after Mwai Kibaki was declared the winner of the presidential election—the first event in a political, economic, and humanitarian crisis.

Bertha of Savoy (d. 1087) · Hayley Williams (b. 1988) · Carrie Fisher (d. 2016)

More anniversaries:

• December 26
• December 27
• December 28

Today's featured picture

Louis Pasteur (1822–1895) was a French chemist and microbiologist renowned for his discoveries of the principles of vaccination, microbial fermentation, and pasteurization. He reduced mortality from puerperal fever, and created the first vaccines for rabies and anthrax. His medical discoveries provided direct support for the germ theory of disease and its application in clinical medicine. Together with Ferdinand Cohn and Robert Koch, he is regarded as one of the main founders of bacteriology.

Painting: Albert Edelfelt

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