Wikipedia:Main Page history/2013 February 20

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From today's featured article

HMS Eagle was an early aircraft carrier of the Royal Navy. Ordered by Chile as the Almirante Latorre-class battleship Almirante Cochrane, she was laid down on 20 February 1913. In early 1918 she was purchased by Britain for conversion to an aircraft carrier. The ship was initially assigned to the Mediterranean Fleet and then later to the China Station. Eagle spent the first nine months of World War II in the Indian Ocean searching for German commerce raiders. She was equipped solely with Fairey Swordfish torpedo bombers until late 1940. She was transferred to the Mediterranean in May 1940, where she escorted multiple convoys to Malta and Greece and attacked Italian shipping, naval units and bases in the Eastern Mediterranean. Whenever Eagle was not at sea, her aircraft were disembarked and used ashore. The ship was relieved by a more modern carrier in March 1941 and ordered to hunt for Axis shipping in the Indian Ocean and the South Atlantic. After completing a major refit in early 1942, the ship made multiple trips delivering fighter aircraft to Malta to boost its air defences. Eagle was torpedoed and sunk by the German submarine U-73 in August 1942 while escorting a convoy to Malta. (Full article...)

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Did you know...

From Wikipedia's newest content:

... that the French queen Bertha of Holland (pictured) was left by her husband because she was "too fat", although he himself was too heavy to ride a horse?

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... that American football player Caleb Sturgis set Florida Gators records for field goals in a season and in a career?

... that the semi-submersible ship Dockwise Vanguard can transport large floating oil rigs, drilling rigs or the world's largest spar platform, the Aasta Hansteen spar?

... that novelist Shirley Barker's first book of poetry enraged poet Robert Frost?

... that the Affenpinscher Banana Joe V Tani Kazari was described as having the "perfect body" by the judge who awarded him the title of Best in Show at the Westminster Kennel Club in 2013?

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In the news

Serzh Sargsyan (pictured) is re-elected President of Armenia.

The Women's Cricket World Cup concludes with Australia defeating the West Indies in the final.

Rafael Correa is re-elected President of Ecuador.

A bomb blast at a market in Hazara Town in Quetta, Pakistan, kills more than 80 people and injures 190 others.

In central Russia, shock waves from a meteor—the largest on record since 1908—injure more than 1,000 people, mainly due to widespread broken glass.

Recent deaths: Richard Briers

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On this day...

February 20

1816 – Italian composer Gioachino Rossini's opera buffa The Barber of Seville was hissed by the audience during its debut at the Teatro Argentina in Rome.

1872 – New York City's Metropolitan Museum of Art (pictured), today containing a collection of over two million works of art, opened.

1943 – The Saturday Evening Post published the first of Norman Rockwell's Four Freedoms, some of the most widely distributed paintings ever produced, in support of U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt's "Four Freedoms".

1959 – The Canadian government under Prime Minister John Diefenbaker cancelled the Avro CF-105 Arrow interceptor aircraft program amid much political debate.

1988 – The Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast voted to secede from Azerbaijan and join Armenia, triggering the Nagorno-Karabakh War.

More anniversaries: February 19 – February 20 – February 21

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It is now February 20, 2013 (UTC) – Reload this page

Today's featured picture

The Bald Eagle (Haliaeetus leucocephalus) is a bird of prey found in North America. As visible here, adults are not bald, but have a head of white feathers. Its name comes from an older meaning of the word, meaning "white headed".

Photograph: W. Lloyd MacKenzie

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