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Today's featured article

This star symbolizes the featured content on Wikipedia.
This star symbolizes the featured content on Wikipedia.

Each day, a summary (roughly 975 characters long) of one of Wikipedia's featured articles (FAs) appears at the top of the Main Page as Today's Featured Article (TFA). The Main Page is viewed about 4.7 million times daily.

TFAs are scheduled by the TFA coordinators: Wehwalt, Gog the Mild and SchroCat. WP:TFAA displays the current month, with easy navigation to other months. If you notice an error in an upcoming TFA summary, please feel free to fix it yourself; if the mistake is in today's or tomorrow's summary, please leave a message at WP:ERRORS so an administrator can fix it. Articles can be nominated for TFA at the TFA requests page, and articles with a date connection within the next year can be suggested at the TFA pending page. Feel free to bring questions and comments to the TFA talk page, and you can ping all the TFA coordinators by adding "{{@TFA}}" in a signed comment on any talk page.

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From today's featured article

Battle of Groix

The Battle of Groix was fought on 23 June 1795 off the Biscay coast of Brittany between elements of the British Channel Fleet, commanded by Admiral Lord Bridport, and the French Atlantic Fleet, under Vice-admiral Villaret de Joyeuse. The British fleet of 14 ships of the line was covering an invasion convoy when it encountered the 12 French ships of the line returning to base at Brest. Villaret ordered his force to take shelter in protected coastal waters, but several ships fell behind. After fierce fights, three French ships were captured; the remainder became scattered and were vulnerable, but Bridport, concerned by the rocky coastline, called off the action. Most historians have considered Bridport's retirement from the battle to be premature, and concluded that an opportunity to destroy the French fleet may have been squandered. The French were trapped in Lorient where food supplies ran out, crippling the fleet. Several French captains were court-martialled following the battle. (Full article...)

From tomorrow's featured article

Sirius A with Sirius B, a white dwarf, indicated by the arrow
Sirius A with Sirius B, a white dwarf, indicated by the arrow

A white dwarf is a stellar core remnant composed mostly of electron-degenerate matter, supported against its own gravity only by electron degeneracy pressure. A white dwarf is very dense: in an Earth sized volume, it contains a mass comparable to the Sun. What light it radiates is from its residual heat. White dwarfs are thought to be the final evolutionary state of stars whose mass is insufficient for them to become a neutron star or black hole. This includes more than 97% of the stars in the Milky Way. After the hydrogen-fusing period of such a main-sequence star ends, it will expand to a red giant and shed its outer layers, leaving behind a core which is the white dwarf. This, very hot when it forms, cools as it radiates its energy until its material begins to crystallize into a cold black dwarf. The oldest known white dwarfs still radiate at temperatures of a few thousand kelvins, which establishes an observational limit on the maximum possible age of the universe. (Full article...)

From the day after tomorrow's featured article

School in Sketty, Swansea, photographed in 1854
School in Sketty, Swansea, photographed in 1854

The period between 1701 and 1870 saw an expansion in access to formal education in Wales, though schooling was not yet universal. Several philanthropic efforts were made to provide education to the poor during the 18th century. In the early to mid-19th century, charitable schools were established to provide a basic education. Private schools aimed at the working classes also existed. State funding was introduced to schools from 1833. Some use of the Welsh language was made in 18th-century philanthropic education, at a time when most Welsh peasants were solely Welsh-speaking. In the early 19th century, Welsh public opinion was keen for children to learn English. Many schools tried to achieve this by excluding Welsh and punishing children for speaking it. Government investigations in the mid-19th century indicated that this approach was ineffective. The government did not prohibit the use of Welsh, but did little to promote bilingualism in schools during this period. Grammar schools experienced difficulties and, by the end of the period, secondary education was limited. Dissenter academies and later theological colleges offered higher education. (Full article...)