Wikipedia:Main Page history/2014 November 16

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From today's featured article

Hurricane Claudette was the third tropical storm and first hurricane of the 2003 Atlantic hurricane season. A fairly long-lived July Atlantic hurricane, Claudette began as a tropical wave in the eastern Caribbean. It moved quickly westward, brushing past the Yucatán Peninsula before moving northwestward through the Gulf of Mexico. Claudette remained a tropical storm until just before making landfall in Port O'Connor, Texas, when it quickly strengthened to a strong Category 1 hurricane. Forecasting its path and intensity was uncertain, resulting in widespread and often unnecessary preparations along its path. Claudette was the first hurricane to make landfall in July in the United States since Hurricane Danny in the 1997 season. The hurricane caused one death and moderate damage in Texas, mostly from strong winds, as well as extensive beach erosion. Because of the damage, President George W. Bush declared portions of South Texas as a Federal Disaster Area, allowing the affected citizens to apply for aid. Claudette also caused significant rainfall and minor damage in the Mexican state of Quintana Roo, as well as minor damage on Saint Lucia. (Full article...)

Part of the 2003 Atlantic hurricane season series, one of Wikipedia's featured topics.

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From Wikipedia's new and recently improved content:

... that Dark Run (pictured) is one of the few fertile streams in the watershed of Catawissa Creek that supports fish life?
... that the 2004 ICC Champions Trophy was West Indies' first major tournament win since the 1979 Cricket World Cup, defeating England in the final by two wickets?
... that the band Lutefisk was formed to cure the "premature midlife artistic crisis" of its frontman?
... that female Parascaris equorum roundworms, an intestinal parasite of horses, can grow to be as long as 15 inches (38 cm)?
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... that actress Bianca Kronlöf was a travelling reporter for the Sveriges Radio and TV charity show Musikhjälpen in 2013?
... that the tritone heard at the beginning of Jimi Hendrix's song "Purple Haze" was historically called "Devil in music" and to play it was considered comparable to ringing Satan's doorbell?

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In the news

The Philae lander, deployed from the European Space Agency's Rosetta probe, reaches the surface of Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko (pictured pre-landing).
In Mexico City, thousands protest the disappearance of 43 students and subsequent discovery of mass graves.
The ALMA radio telescope array shows a protoplanetary disk around the star HL Tauri.
In the United States midterm elections, the Republican Party wins control of the Senate and increases its majority in the House of Representatives.
In horse racing, Protectionist wins the Melbourne Cup.
One World Trade Center, at 1,776 feet (541 m) the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere, opens.

Ongoing: Ebola outbreak – Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant
Recent deaths: Alexander Grothendieck – Acker Bilk

On this day...

November 16: Day of Declaration of Sovereignty in Estonia (1988)

1776 – American Revolutionary War: British and Hessian units captured Fort Washington from the Patriots.
1885 – After a five-day trial following the North-West Rebellion, Louis Riel (pictured), Canadian rebel leader of the Métis and "Father of Manitoba", was executed by hanging for high treason.
1944 – Operation Queen commenced in Düren, Germany, with one of the heaviest Allied tactical bombing attacks of the Second World War.
1959 – The Sound of Music, a musical by Rodgers and Hammerstein based on The Story of the Trapp Family Singers, opened on Broadway at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre.
1989 – Eight employees of Universidad Centroamericana "José Simeón Cañas" in San Salvador, including six Catholic priests, were murdered by a Salvadoran Army "death squad".

More anniversaries: November 15 – November 16 – November 17

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Today's featured picture

The noisy miner (Manorina melanocephala) is a bird in the honeyeater family endemic to eastern and south-eastern Australia and feeds mostly nectar, fruit and insects. This highly vocal species has a large range of songs, calls, scoldings and alarms, lives in large groups, and is territorial. Populations have grown in numerous places along this miner's range, and as such there is now an overabundance.

Photograph: JJ Harrison

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