Milestone: 2,500th featured picture

Fifteen articles were promoted to featured status:

• Manchester Mark 1 (nom), the prototype for the world's first commercially available stored-program computer, this valve-computer of the late 1940s caused quite a stir (nominated by Malleus Fatuorum).
• Zino's Petrel (nom), Europe's most endangered seabird, which survived a fire in August that killed two-thirds of the chicks (Jimfbleak).
• David Bowie (nom), the legendary English rock musician (PL290).
• Grace Sherwood (nom) (1660 – late 1740), also called the "Witch of Pungo". She was a healer, midwife, and farmer in Virginia who was jailed for bewitching a woman, causing her to miscarry. She was officially pardoned in 2006 (Rlevse).
• Lat (nom), Malaysia's "cultural icon" and one of its most trusted people", according to nominator (Jappalang). All the more unusual that Lat is a cartoonist.
• Bix Beiderbecke (nom) (1903–31), was one of the two most influential jazz soloists of the 1920s, along with Louis Armstrong (Margo&Gladys)
• Roy Kilner (nom), a popular Yorkshire cricketer in the 1920s (Sarastro1).
• SMS Goeben (nom), the German battlecruiser that played a part in bringing the Ottomans into the war on the side of Germany and stymied Allied attempts to seize Constantinople (Parsecboy, incidentally just elected as MilHist Lead Coordinator, and Sturmvogel 66).
• The Basement Tapes (nom), a 1975 studio album by Bob Dylan and The Band, from 1967 recordings at houses in and around Woodstock, New York (Mick gold, I.M.S., and Moisejp), on behalf of the Dylan team).
• School for Creative and Performing Arts (nom), a pioneer in school integration and arts education—but the sex scandals, arson, movie stars, and MTV look even more interesting (Nasty Housecat).
• Exelon Pavilions (nom), four structures that generate electricity from solar energy and provide access to underground parking in Millennium Park, Chicago (Ruhrfisch and TonyTheTiger).
• Banksia verticillata (nom), a shrub native to the southwest of Western Australia (Casliber).
• Geastrum quadrifidum (nom), a four-footed earthstar mushroom (Sasata).
• Miniopterus griveaudi (nom), a Madagascan bat (Ucucha).
• Saint-Gaudens double eagle (nom), which nominator Wehwalt says is "considered by many to be the most beautiful of US coins". This is the second in what will be a numismatic trilogy.

Choice of the week. The Signpost asked Bishonen, who has many FA promotions to her name, to select the best of the week. The choice is from both last week plus the four new FAs from the week before:

"Abandoning with regret all sports, music albums, battleships, flora and fauna after a quickish read-through—I'm very sorry, but I'm just not equipped for giving opinions on those subjects—I dived into David Bowie, Lat, and Grace Sherwood with relish. Such intriguing subjects! Articles that do them full justice! Picking one of those three wouldn't be easy, I reflected, and then promptly stumbled over an irresistible and unlikely article, my choice for the week. Saint-Gaudens double eagle is about a twenty-dollar gold coin, first produced in 1907. Strictly for the numismatics otaku, is it not? No. The piece is a great read for anybody who enjoys human, historical and cultural eccentricity and battleground. It's very considerate of the ignorant reader, and I especially appreciate that, even though the subject is so American, it's perfectly transparent and accessible to the international reader. I can hardly wait for the third part of Wehwalt's numismatics trilogy."

Five lists were promoted:

• Robert Bathurst filmography (nom), an English actor. He gained wider recognition among British audiences in his television roles in the 1990s in Joking Apart and Cold Feet (nominated by Bradley0110).
• List of number-one singles from the 1950s (UK) (nom). Frankie Laine, Guy Mitchell, and Elvis Presley all had the most number-one singles in this decade (four) (Rambo's Revenge).
• 1992 College Baseball All-America Team (nom) The 1992 All-American class featured three Major League Baseball All-Stars, two Olympians, one Major League Baseball record holder and a two-time World Series champion (TonyTheTiger).
• List of largest volcanic eruptions (nom). Guarapuava was the largest, spewing 8,600 km³ of lava and tephra (Qfl247, Avenue, and Resident Mario). (picture at right)
• 1972 Winter Olympics medal table (nom). The Soviet Union won both the most overall medals (16) and gold medals (8) (Parutakupiu).

Choice of the week. We asked FL nominator and reviewer Parutakupiu for his choice of the best (ignoring his own):

“

Five lists elevated to featured status in the past week, one of them nominated by myself: not much to choose from. But taking a careful read of the other four, I would pick List of largest volcanic eruptions as the most interesting. It is about a topic that has always fascinated me, and it really allows one to put in perspective how "tiny" the most recent volcanic cataclisms were in comparison with those of pre-historic times. Needless to state how comprehensive, lengthy and well sourced this work is.

”

On the occasion of the 2,500th featured picture, The Signpost asked FPC regular Makeemlighter about the earliest days of the process and how it has evolved. "The early history was quite confusing when I dug it up", he says. "The original process, called 'Brilliant pictures', was described as the visual equivalent to 'Brilliant prose', the forerunner of the featured article process. The oldest FPC archive is from the start of 2004, but Featured Pictures existed for about a year before that. As far as I can tell, the earliest Featured Pictures were Peppermint and Corsican mint plant and Potato plant, although they were subsequently delisted. Epicyclic gear ratios was the first image nominated through the process, and has survived an attempt to delist it."

In those days, Makeemlighter says the process was fairly casual – some of the nominations even lacked closing statements. It took more than a year after the first FPs were created for a template to be developed. Fair-use images, not permitted nowadays, were allowed for a while, and there seemed to be little of the modern formal emphasis on the notion of encyclopedic value. The process was different mechanically, too: "Images that received any objections would not be promoted unless that objection was dealt with and a 'nearly unanimous consensus' was reached. Today, the general rule is 2/3 support and an image passes", within a strictly applied nine-day period. By October 2004, there were more than 130 FPs. Tau Emerald in flight was the 1,000th FP, in December 2007. Rambutan white background was the 2000th FP, in September 2009 .

This week was uncommon at FPC in that only four images were promoted. They will be considered for Choice of the week along with next week's promotions. Medium-sized images can be seen by clicking on "nom":

• Red-and-yellow Barbet (nom), found in eastern Africa, where it lives in broken terrain, nesting and roosting in burrows (created by Ikiwaner).
• Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor (nom), a single-seat, twin-engine fifth-generation fighter aircraft that uses stealth technology (created by Rob Schenk).
• USS Oregon in dry dock (nom), valuable for showing normally submerged parts, and praised for its detail and sharpness.
• Coconut octopus (nom). The creature is sufficiently advanced to use coconut shells as tools (created by Nhobgood). (picture at top)

One file was promoted: File:Pleasant_Moments_Piano_Roll.ogg nom, a 1916 recording of Pleasant moments (2 m, 56 s), a ragtime waltz recorded on a piano roll by Scott Joplin. Thought lost until discovered by User:PlayerRoll in 2006, it has been scanned and recorded on a grand piano as an MP3 file. Piano rolls—in which perforations were etched into a roll of stiff paper that could operate a pneumatic playing system on a piano—were one of the first forms of digital memory, and provided home entertainment to millions of people in the early 20th century.

This week saw no new administrators.