User:Solipsist/MainPageTemp-22Jul

Today's featured article

A sound film is a motion picture with synchronized sound, as opposed to a silent film. The first known public exhibition of projected sound films took place in Paris in 1900, but it would be decades before reliable synchronization was achieved in a commercially practical way. The first commercial screening of movies with fully synchronized sound took place in the United States in April 1923. In the early years after the introduction of sound, films incorporating synchronized dialogue were known as "talkies." The first feature-length movie originally presented as a talkie was The Jazz Singer, released in October 1927. By the early 1930s, the talkies were a global phenomenon. In the United States, they helped secure Hollywood's position as one of the world's most powerful cultural/commercial systems. (more...)

In the news

• Jigme Singye Wangchuck, the King of Bhutan, abdicates in favour of his son Jigme Khesar Namgyal Wangchuck a year earlier than expected.
• The Chinese River Dolphin (illustrated) is declared functionally extinct, the first extinction of a large mammal in recent decades.
• Suffolk police launch an investigation on five dead bodies discovered near Ipswich in Suffolk, England.
• Astronauts on mission STS-116 attempt to retract a solar array on the International Space Station's Integrated Truss Structure.
• Former President of Ethiopia Mengistu Haile Mariam is convicted in absentia of genocide by an Ethiopian court for his part in the so-called "Red Terror".
  Wikinews – Recent deaths – More current events...

  Wikipedia:Today's second feature/December 22, 2006