Wikipedia:Main Page history/2020 June 17

Nestor Lakoba (1893–1936) was an Abkhaz Communist leader. In the aftermath of the Russian Revolution, Lakoba helped establish Bolshevik power in Abkhazia in the Caucasus region of the Soviet Union. As the head of Abkhazia after its conquest by the Bolshevik Red Army in 1921, Lakoba saw that Abkhazia was initially given autonomy as the Socialist Soviet Republic of Abkhazia. Though nominally a part of the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic with a special status of "union republic", Abkhazia was effectively a separate republic, made possible by Lakoba's close relationship with Joseph Stalin. In 1931 Lakoba was forced to accept a downgrade of Abkhazia's status to that of an autonomous republic within Georgia. Another confidant of Stalin, Lavrentiy Beria, summoned Lakoba to visit him in Tbilisi in December 1936. Lakoba was poisoned, allowing Beria to consolidate his control over Abkhazia and all of Georgia. (Full article...)

Australasian gannet

• ... that Nigel, nicknamed "the world's loneliest gannet" (species pictured), attempted to mate with a concrete decoy bird on Mana Island, New Zealand?
• ... that Joseph M. Carey lost reelection to the United States Senate with zero votes to Francis E. Warren due to his opposition to the free silver movement?
• ... that Road Rash II is reportedly "the first game in which you could actually beat, and get beaten by, a cop"?
• ... that the drama The Undivine Comedy has been recognized as one of the most significant works of literature of the Polish Romantic period?
• ... that Swedish composer Harald Fryklöf, "who had hardly ever known a day's illness in his life", died from the Spanish flu at the age of 36?
• ... that the Keweenaw Brewing Company's most popular beer gets its "widow maker" nickname from a dangerous drill once used to mine copper?
• ... that both the white-bellied woolly mouse opossum and the Fernando Po swift are named after the British architectural historian and philanthropist Constance Sladen?
• ... that the East York Lyndhursts' loss to the Russians in ice hockey was "a national calamity, a national humiliation, and a mortifying experience"?

U.S. Supreme Court Building

• At least twenty soldiers are killed during skirmishes along the Line of Actual Control between China and India.
• The U.S. Supreme Court (building pictured) rules that gay and transgender people are protected from employment discrimination under the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
• Burundian president Pierre Nkurunziza dies in office at the age of 55.

June 17

Vlad Dracula

• 1462 – Ottoman–Hungarian wars: Wallachian forces led by Vlad Dracula (portrait shown) attacked an Ottoman camp at night in an attempt to assassinate Mehmed II.
• 1795 – French Revolutionary Wars: Off the coast of Brittany, a Royal Navy squadron commanded by William Cornwallis fended off a numerically superior French Navy fleet.
• 1940 – Second World War: RMS Lancastria was sunk by German aircraft near Saint-Nazaire, France, causing thousands of fatalities in Britain's worst maritime disaster.
• 1952 – Guatemalan Revolution: The Guatemalan Congress passed Decree 900, redistributing unused land greater than 224 acres (0.91 km²) in area to local peasants.