Wikipedia:Main Page history/2019 August 12

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From today's featured article

Hurricane Nadine was the fourth-longest-lived Atlantic hurricane on record. The fourteenth tropical cyclone and named storm of the 2012 Atlantic hurricane season, it developed from a tropical wave west of Cape Verde on September 10. By the following day, it had strengthened into a tropical storm. Well away from any landmass, Nadine reached hurricane status on September 15. Two days later, the storm began moving northeastward toward the Azores, producing tropical-storm-force winds on a few islands, but on September 19 it veered east-southeastward before reaching them. On September 21 Nadine transitioned into a non-tropical low pressure area. Its remnants regenerated into a tropical cyclone on September 24 and became a hurricane again on September 28. After transitioning into an extratropical cyclone, the remnants of Nadine passed through the Azores on October 4 and again brought strong winds to the islands. (Full article...)

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Did you know...

Durant-Dort Factory One in 2010

... that Durant-Dort Factory One (pictured) in Flint, Michigan, is often considered the birthplace of General Motors?
... that pianist Alexandre Kantorow won the first prize, gold medal, and Grand Prix in the 2019 International Tchaikovsky Competition, becoming the first French winner in the competition's history?
... that KSOM in Tucson, Arizona, suffered two transmitter fires in less than four years of broadcasting?
... that Guðrún Björnsdóttir, a 20th-century Icelandic politician and women's rights activist, was at one time a milk vendor?
... that the nine balls of Parapivot come from nine different countries?
... that Harold Forsyth, the Peruvian ambassador to Japan, is the father of a professional football player and husband of a beauty pageant queen?
... that sheep infected with the parasitic nematode Teladorsagia circumcincta may suffer from protein deficiency?
... that The Twilight Zone episode "The New Exhibit" features axe-murderer and last pirate of New York, Albert W. Hicks?

In the news

Toni Morrison

At least 71 people are killed and more than 70 others injured in a fuel tanker truck explosion in Morogoro, Tanzania.
A suicide bombing near a police station in Kabul, Afghanistan, kills 14 people and injures 145 others.
American novelist Toni Morrison (pictured) dies at the age of 88.
India revokes the special status of Jammu and Kashmir and establishes Ladakh as a separate union territory.

On this day

August 12

Cover of the 1945 Princeton edition of the Smyth Report

1099 – The First Crusade concluded with the Battle of Ascalon and Fatimid forces under Al-Afdal Shahanshah retreating to Egypt.
1914 – World War I: Belgian forces were victorious in Halen but were ultimately unable to stop the German invasion of their kingdom.
1945 – An official administrative history (cover pictured) of the Manhattan Project, written by American physicist Henry DeWolf Smyth, was released just days after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
1981 – The IBM Personal Computer, the original version and progenitor of the IBM PC compatible hardware platform, was introduced.

Jænberht (d. 792) · Abraham Zacuto (b. 1452) · Maurice Fernandes (b. 1897)

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From today's featured list

San Giuliano Martire

A titular church in Rome, Italy, is assigned to a cleric of the Catholic Church who is created a cardinal. These are churches in the city, under the Diocese of Rome, which are assigned to cardinals as honorary designations that symbolise their relationship to the diocese and to its bishop, the pope. There are two types of titular churches: titles and deaconries. A title is a titular church that is assigned to a cardinal priest (of the second order of the College of Cardinals), whereas a deaconry is a titular church that is assigned to a cardinal deacon (the third order). When a cardinal priest or a cardinal deacon is then appointed a cardinal bishop (the first order), he is typically transferred from his titular church to the vacant title of a suburbicarian diocese, in the vicinity of Rome. There are 232 current titular churches, 164 of which are titles and 68 of which are deaconries (San Giuliano Martire pictured). Twenty-three titular churches are currently vacant. (Full list...)

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Today's featured picture

The Eagle Nebula is a young open cluster of stars in the constellation Serpens, discovered by Jean-Philippe Loys de Cheseaux in 1745–46. Both the "Eagle" and the "Star Queen" refer to visual impressions of the dark silhouette near the centre of the nebula, an area made famous by the "Pillars of Creation" imaged by the Hubble Space Telescope. The emission nebula contains several active star-forming gas and dust regions, including the aforementioned pillars.

This picture of the Eagle Nebula is a three-colour composite mosaic image, based on photographs taken by the Wide Field Imager camera of the MPG/ESO telescope at La Silla Observatory. The area imaged in Pillars of Creation can be seen in the centre, along with other star-forming regions, as well as a large number of stars in front of, in or behind the nebula.

Photograph credit: European Southern Observatory

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