Wikipedia:Today's featured list/November 2016
|
Featured list tools: |
November 4
Matthew McConaughey's acting career includes over 40 films. He made his breakthrough by starring in Richard Linklater's coming of age comedy Dazed and Confused in 1993. His first lead role was in the 1996 film adaptation of the John Grisham novel A Time to Kill. During the 2000s, McConaughey was typecast as a romantic comedy lead in the films The Wedding Planner (2001), How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days (2003), and Failure to Launch (2006). In the early 2010s, McConaughey became better known for his dramatic roles. He played Mickey Haller in The Lincoln Lawyer, and reunited with Linklater on the black comedy Bernie (both 2011). His role as Ron Woodroof in the 2013 biographical drama Dallas Buyers Club garnered him the Academy Award for Best Actor. In 2014, he played detective Rust Cohle in the crime drama series True Detective which earned him a nomination for a Primetime Emmy. (Full list...)
November 7
The 14th Parliament of Pakistan is the legislature of Pakistan following the 2013 general election of members of parliament (MPs) to the National Assembly of Pakistan, the lower house of the bicameral Majlis-e-Shura. The National Assembly is a democratically elected body consisting of 342 members, who are referred to as Members of the National Assembly (MNAs), of which 272 are directly elected members; 70 reserved seats for women and religious minorities are allocated to the political parties according to their proportion of the total vote. The election saw each of Parliament's 272 constituencies return one MP to the National Assembly. It resulted in a Pakistan Muslim League (N) majority, and a massive loss of seats for the Pakistan Peoples Party. Pakistan Muslim League (N) became the single largest party, though without an overall majority. The Pakistan Muslim League (N) won 188 seats in the National Assembly through a simple majority. (Full list...)
November 11
The class the stars fell on is an expression used to describe the United States Military Academy Class of 1915. In the United States Army, the insignia reserved for generals is one or more stars. Of the 164 graduates that year, 59 (36%) attained the rank of general, the most of any class in the history of the United States Military Academy, hence the expression. Two reached the five-star rank of General of the Army. There were also 2 four-star generals, 7 three-star lieutenant generals, 24 two-star major generals and 24 one-star brigadier generals. Dwight D. Eisenhower (pictured), one of the five-star generals, went on to become the 34th President of the United States. (Full list...)
November 14
.jpg)
The discography of Powderfinger, an Australian alternative rock group, consists of seven studio albums, thirty-one singles, five extended plays, three live albums, four compilation albums, one video album and twenty-nine music videos. Shortly after the independent release of their debut self-titled EP in 1993, Powderfinger signed on to a major record label to release their second EP, Transfusion. In 1994 they issued their debut album Parables for Wooden Ears, which did not reach the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) Albums Chart. After performances at music festivals, touring and supporting international artists, Powderfinger released their second studio album, Double Allergic (1996), which became their charting breakthrough by peaking at No. 4. Following public recognition from the album's high-selling singles, Powderfinger went on to release Internationalist in 1998, which was their first number-one album. Golden Rule, released in 2009, became their fifth studio album in a row which reached number-one. On 13 November 2010 Powderfinger performed for the last time. (Full list...)
November 18
There are 13 lakes of at least five acres (0.020 km2) within the borders of Minneapolis, Minnesota, known as the "City of Lakes". Lake Calhoun (pictured) is the largest and deepest, covering 421 acres (1.70 km2) with a maximum depth of 89.9 feet (27.4 m), while Lake Hiawatha has the largest watershed at 115,840 acres (468.79 km2). Many of the city's lakes formed during the retreat of the Laurentide Ice Sheet at the end of the last glacial period. The Dakota harvested wild rice from the lakes, which were developed in the 1880s and onward by the city's Board of Park Commissioners. The Commissioners purchased much of Minneapolis's lakefront property, had the lakes dredged, and connected lakes Calhoun, Isles, and Cedar via artificial channels, resulting in an interconnected parks system and the city's "Chain of Lakes". Minneapolis's lakes and lakeshore, much of which is public parkland, host recreation year-round including swimming, sailing, canoeing, biking, jogging, and ice skating. (Full list...)
November 21
Fifty-two hat-tricks have been achieved in the history of the Six Nations Championship and its predecessor tournaments. In rugby union, a hat-trick is the scoring of three tries or three drop goals in a single match. The first player to achieve the feat was Charles Wade (pictured), who was an Australian student at Oxford University when he was called up as a travelling reserve for England's match against Wales in 1882. When Philip Newton got lost on his way to the match, Wade was instated in his place. He scored three tries in England's 2–0 victory, which was the first match of the championship. George Lindsay scored five tries in Scotland's 4–0 win over Wales in 1887, the most tries scored by a single player in a Championship match. Besides Lindsay, six players have scored more than three tries in a Championship match; of these Ian Smith is the only player to achieve the feat twice. Four players have scored a hat-trick of drop goals: Pierre Albaladejo, Jean-Patrick Lescarboura, Diego Dominguez and Neil Jenkins. English players have scored the most hat-tricks with 15, while France and Ireland have conceded the most, with 11 each. (Full list...)
November 25
The science fiction media franchise Mass Effect, developed by the Canadian company BioWare, is composed of multi-platform video games and associated media. The core of the franchise is an eponymous trilogy of action role-playing third-person shooter video games, which follow Commander Shepard's mission to save the galaxy from a race of mechanical beings known as the Reapers. The Mass Effect franchise also includes three mobile games, each with a different gameplay style; four novels, written by Drew Karpyshyn and William C. Dietz; two art books; ten comic book series or mini-comics and their anthologies; an animated film; and eleven soundtrack albums or singles. The video games have had high sales, with the last major game, Mass Effect 3, shipping over 3.5 million copies in its first week of release. Reception of other media in the franchise has been mixed: the comics, such as Mass Effect: Redemption, have been praised for their writing, and novels such as Mass Effect: Revelation have been recommended to fans of the games, but Mass Effect: Deception was derided as inconsistent with the main trilogy. A fourth main series game, Mass Effect: Andromeda, is currently in development and planned for release in 2017, along with an associated novelization by N. K. Jemisin, an art book, and a coloring book. (Full list...)
November 28
The 59th Academy Awards ceremony, organized by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), took place on March 30, 1987, at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles. During the ceremony, AMPAS presented Academy Awards (commonly referred to as Oscars) in 23 categories honoring films released in 1986. The ceremony, televised in the United States by ABC, was produced by Samuel Goldwyn, Jr. and directed by Marty Pasetta. Actors Chevy Chase, Paul Hogan, and Goldie Hawn co-hosted the show. Hawn hosted the gala for the second time, having previously been a co-host of the 48th ceremony held in 1976. Meanwhile, this was Chase and Hogan's first Oscars hosting stint. Platoon won four awards including Best Picture. Other winners included Hannah and Her Sisters and A Room with a View with three awards, and Aliens with two awards. (Full list...)