Wikipedia:Main Page history/2015 March 6

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From today's featured article

In the 1850 Atlantic hurricane season, three significant tropical cyclones affected land. Records of other storms are incomplete, since the Atlantic hurricane database goes back only to 1851. The first system struck North Carolina in July, causing significant damage before battering the Mid-Atlantic states. Rivers were flooded from Baltimore to northern New England, and 20 people were killed along the Schuylkill River. In August, a strong hurricane hit Havana, Cuba, before making landfall on the Florida Panhandle with an enormous storm surge. Coastal flooding was severe around Apalachicola. Abundant precipitation fell from Georgia through Virginia; one river swelled more than 20 feet (6 m) above its normal height. The storm toppled a railroad bridge near Halifax, North Carolina. Offshore, a pilot boat collided with a larger ship in the rough seas and sank. Considered the worst storm in nearly 30 years in the tidewater region of Virginia, the cyclone briefly reentered the Atlantic off New Jersey before making landfall over New England, with strong winds and moderate to heavy rains. In September, a hurricane brushed the coastline from New York to Cape Cod with gusty winds and appreciable rainfall, and later struck Atlantic Canada. (Full article...)

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Did you know...

From Wikipedia's new and recently improved content:

... that Eliza Ann Grier (pictured), an emancipated slave, was the first African-American woman licensed to practice medicine in the state of Georgia?
... that T. Rex and the Crater of Doom details the development of the hypothesis that dinosaurs were wiped out by a meteor impact?
... that during the Spanish conquest of the Maya, the Spanish conquistadors preferred the cotton armour of their Maya enemies to their own steel armour?
... that Australian physicist Eric Burhop led an international team at Fermilab that detected the Λ+
c (charmed lambda baryon)?
... that no date has been specified for admitting the public to California's Marsh Creek State Park, although the park was formally named on January 27, 2012?
... that during WWI, the UK Ministry of Labour allowed women to work at the Hughes Bolckow Ship wrecking company provided they didn't have to lift a sledgehammer weighing more than 5 pounds (2.3 kg)?
... that Romanian psychologist Florian Ștefănescu-Goangă initially cooperated with the country's communist government, but ended up a political prisoner?
... that the Waldorf–Astoria Hotel's famed maître d'hôtel, Oscar Tschirky, created the Waldorf salad, eggs Benedict, and Thousand Island dressing?

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In the news

The Iraqi Government reports that the ancient Assyrian city of Nimrud has been destroyed by ISIL who claimed it was blasphemous.
Pakalitha Mosisili (pictured) forms a coalition government following a snap election in Lesotho.
The wreck of the Japanese battleship Musashi is discovered in the Sibuyan Sea of the Philippines.
The Reform Party wins the Estonian parliamentary election.
Russian opposition politician Boris Nemtsov is assassinated in Moscow.
The U.S. Federal Communications Commission votes to reclassify Internet broadband as a utility, enforcing net neutrality rules.
Avijit Roy, a secularist activist and blogger, is murdered in Dhaka, Bangladesh.

Ongoing: Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant – War in Ukraine
Recent deaths: Dave Mackay – Minnie Miñoso – Yaşar Kemal

On this day...

March 6: Independence Day in Ghana (1957)

961 – The Muslim Emirate of Crete was conquered by the Byzantine Empire.
1665 – The first joint Secretary of the Royal Society, Henry Oldenburg, publishes the first issue of Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, the world's longest-running scientific journal.
1853 – Giuseppe Verdi's La traviata premiered at Venice's La Fenice, but the performance was considered so bad that it caused the Italian composer to revise portions of the opera.
1945 – Petru Groza (pictured) of the Ploughmen's Front became the first Prime Minister of the Communist Party-dominated governments of Romania.
1975 – Iran and Iraq signed the Algiers Agreement to settle a border dispute, only to begin fighting again five years later in the Iran–Iraq War.

More anniversaries: March 5 – March 6 – March 7

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From today's featured list

There are 26 named tributaries of Catawissa Creek (pictured), a 41.8-mile (67.3 km) long creek flowing into the Susquehanna River. Of the 26 tributaries, 19 are direct. The creek flows through Luzerne, Schuylkill, and Columbia counties in Pennsylvania. The two shortest tributaries are approximately 1 mile (1.6 km) long, while the longest is about 10.8 miles (17.4 km) in length. By length, the five largest tributaries of Catawissa Creek are Little Catawissa Creek, Tomhicken Creek, Scotch Run, Beaver Run, and Messers Run. By watershed area, the five largest tributaries are Tomhicken Creek, Little Catawissa Creek, Beaver Run, Scotch Run, and Messers Run. Various species of fish inhabit most of the tributaries of Catawissa Creek. The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection considers eleven tributaries of the creek to be Coldwater Fisheries, an official designation that means that a stream supports fish from the family Salmonidae and other coldwater fauna and flora. (Full list...)

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Today's featured picture

Detail of the tiled facade on the Dome of the Rock, a shrine located on the Temple Mount in the Old City of Jerusalem. Completed in 691 CE, at the order of Umayyad Caliph Abd al-Malik, it is one of the oldest extant works of Islamic architecture. It contains the Foundation Stone, which is religiously significant for Jews, Christians and Muslims alike.

The tile work on the facade of the shrine dates back to the reign of Suleiman the Magnificent (1520 to 1566) and took seven years to install. Many of the tiles were replaced during a restoration project which began in 1955, as the originals had been dislodged by rain.

Photograph: Andrew Shiva

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