April 30 Wikipedia featured article

The Franklin half dollar coin was struck by the United States Mint from 1948 to 1963. It pictures Founding Father Benjamin Franklin on the obverse, with the Liberty Bell and a small eagle on the reverse. Produced in 90 percent silver with a reeded edge, the coin was struck at the Philadelphia, Denver, and San Francisco mints. Mint director Nellie Tayloe Ross had long admired Franklin, and asked the Mint's chief engraver, John Sinnock, to design the coin; his initials appear on the obverse, but some mistook them for the initials of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin. When Ross submitted the designs to the Commission of Fine Arts, they disliked the small eagle and felt that depicting the crack in the Liberty Bell would expose the coinage to jokes and ridicule; nevertheless, the Mint proceeded with Sinnock's designs. Beginning in 1964 the coin was replaced by the Kennedy half dollar, issued in honor of the assassinated President, John F. Kennedy. Though the coin is still legal tender, its face value is greatly exceeded by its value to collectors or as silver. (Full article...)

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On this day: April 30

April 30: Holy Saturday (Eastern Christianity, 2016); National Persian Gulf Day in Iran; Consumer Protection Day in Thailand

William McIntosh

• 1598 – King Henry IV of France issued the Edict of Nantes, granting freedom of religion to the Huguenots.
• 1825 - Creek chief William McIntosh (pictured) was executed by being stabbed in the heart for having signed a treating ceding much of remaining Creek lands to the United States.
• 1943 – Second World War: The Royal Navy submarine HMS Seraph began Operation Mincemeat to deceive Germany about the upcoming invasion of Sicily.
• 1982 – Sixteen monks and a nun belonging to Ananda Marga in Calcutta, India, were dragged out of taxis by persons unknown in three different locations, beaten to death and then set on fire.
• 2009 – A gunman went on a shooting spree at the Azerbaijan State Oil Academy, a public university in Baku, killing 12 people before committing suicide.

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April 29 Wikipedia featured article

Lightning is a fictional character from Square Enix's Final Fantasy series. She first appeared as a playable character and protagonist in the role-playing video game Final Fantasy XIII, and reappeared as a supporting character in Final Fantasy XIII-2 and as the sole playable character in Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII. She was created by Motomu Toriyama, the director and scenario writer of XIII, and designed by Tetsuya Nomura, a regular character artist for the series. Their idea was to create a strong female protagonist who was adept at combat and less feminine than previous Final Fantasy heroines. Lightning has received mixed commentary from critics—much of it relating to her cold personality, which was compared to that of Final Fantasy VII's protagonist Cloud Strife. Some critics saw her in Lightning Returns as underdeveloped and unlikable, while others found her better developed and more human than in previous games. In lists later compiled by video game publications, Lightning was commended as one of the best characters in the Final Fantasy series and in video games as a whole. (Full article...)

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On this day: April 29

April 29: Good Friday (Eastern Christianity, 2016); Shōwa Day in Japan

Replica of HMS Endeavour

• 1587 – Anglo-Spanish War: In the Bay of Cádiz, Francis Drake led the first of several naval raids on the Spanish Armada that destroyed so many ships that Philip II of Spain had to delay his plans to invade England for over a year.
• 1770 – British explorer James Cook and the crew of HMS Endeavour (replica pictured), the first European ship to land in eastern Australia, reached the coast of Botany Bay near present-day Sydney.
• 1903 – A 30 million cubic-metre landslide buried the town of Frank, Northwest Territories, and killed at least 70 of the town's residents, making it the deadliest landslide in Canadian history.
• 1946 – The International Military Tribunal for the Far East convened and indicted Hideki Tojo and 27 other Japanese leaders for war crimes.
• 1997 – The 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention went into effect, outlawing the production, stockpiling and use of chemical weapons in those countries that ratified the arms control agreement.

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April 28 Wikipedia featured article

HMS Bounty (reconstruction)

On 28 April 1789, a mutiny on HMS Bounty in the south Pacific was led by Fletcher Christian. Bounty had left England in 1787 on a mission to collect breadfruit plants from Tahiti. During a five-month layover there, many of the men were in relationships with native Polynesians. Lieutenant William Bligh handed out increasingly harsh punishments and abuse, especially to Christian, and morale plummeted. After three weeks back at sea, Bligh and 18 of his crew were set adrift in the ship's small uncovered launch, and had to row and sail more than 4,000 miles (6,400 km) to reach safety. In 1791, 14 of the Bounty crew were arrested in Tahiti; four of these died when their ship ran aground on the Great Barrier Reef, four were acquitted at a court martial, three were pardoned and three were hanged. On Pitcairn Island, just one surviving mutineer, John Adams, was discovered in 1808; Christian and most of the rest had been killed, by each other and by the mistreated Tahitians they brought with them. Their descendants would continue to inhabit Pitcairn into the 21st century. The view of Bligh as an overbearing monster has in recent years been challenged by historians. (Full article...)

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On this day: April 28

April 28: International Workers' Memorial Day; Maundy Thursday (Eastern Christianity, 2016)

Aurora Quezon

• 1253 – Nichiren, a Japanese monk, expounded Namu Myōhō Renge Kyō for the first time and declared it to be the essence of Buddhism, in effect founding Nichiren Buddhism.
• 1887 – A week after being arrested by the Prussian Secret Police, Alsatian police inspector Guillaume Schnaebelé was released on order of German Emperor William I, defusing a possible war.
• 1949 – Former First Lady of the Philippines Aurora Quezon (pictured), her daughter, and ten others were assassinated by the military arm of the Philippine Communist Party.
• 1965 – Four days after the Dominican Civil War began, the United States invaded the country, aiming to prevent the development of what Lyndon Johnson saw as a possible second Cuban Revolution.
• 2001 – Dennis Tito became the world's first fee-paying space tourist, riding the Russian Soyuz TM-32 spacecraft to the International Space Station.

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April 27 Wikipedia featured article

Menkauhor Kaiu was an Ancient Egyptian pharaoh of the Old Kingdom period, the seventh ruler of the Fifth Dynasty in the 25th or 24th century BC. He ruled for possibly eight or nine years, following king Nyuserre Ini, and was succeeded by Djedkare Isesi. Although Menkauhor is well attested by historical sources, few artefacts from his reign have survived; less is known about him than about most Fifth Dynasty pharaohs, and no offspring of his have been identified. Khentkaus III may have been Menkauhor's mother, as indicated by discoveries in her tomb in 2015. Beyond the construction of monuments, the only known activity dated to his reign is an expedition to the copper and turquoise mines in Sinai. He ordered the construction of a sun temple, the last ever to be built, called the Akhet-Ra ("The Horizon of Ra"). Known from inscriptions found in the tombs of its priests, this temple is yet to be located. Menkauhor was buried in Saqqara in a small pyramid named Netjer-Isut Menkauhor ("The Divine Places of Menkauhor"). Known today as the Headless Pyramid, the ruin had been lost under shifting sands until its rediscovery in 2008. (Full article...)

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April 26 Wikipedia featured article

Alex Chilton

Big Star was an American power pop band formed in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1971 by Alex Chilton, Chris Bell, Jody Stephens, and Andy Hummel. The group broke up in 1974, but reorganized with a new line-up nearly 20 years later. In its first era, the band's musical style drew on the vocal harmonies of The Beatles, as well as the swaggering rhythms of The Rolling Stones and the jangling guitars of The Byrds. To the resulting power pop, Big Star added dark, existential themes, and produced a style that foreshadowed the alternative rock of the 1980s and 1990s. Their first two albums, #1 Record and Radio City, suffered from ineffective marketing but garnered enthusiastic reviews; Rolling Stone called the band a "quintessential American power pop band" that was "one of the most mythic and influential cult acts in all of rock & roll". In 1993, Chilton and Stephens re-formed Big Star with Jon Auer and Ken Stringfellow. After tours in Europe and Japan, they released a new studio album, In Space, in 2005. Big Star was inducted into the Memphis Music Hall of Fame in 2014. (Full article...)

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On this day: April 26

April 26: World Intellectual Property Day; Feast day of Our Lady of Good Counsel (Roman Catholic Church)

Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant

• 1478 – In a conspiracy to replace the Medici family as rulers of the Florentine Republic, the Pazzi family attacked Lorenzo de' Medici and killed his brother Giuliano during High Mass at the Florence Duomo.
• 1777 – American Revolutionary War: Sixteen-year-old Sybil Ludington rode forty miles through the night to warn militiamen under the control of her father that British troops were planning to invade Danbury, Connecticut.
• 1946 – In Naperville, Illinois, US, two passenger trains collided, leaving 45 people dead some 125 injured.
• 1986 – The Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant (pictured) near Chernobyl, Ukrainian SSR, suffered a steam explosion, resulting in a fire, a nuclear meltdown, and the evacuation and resettlement of over 336,000 people around Europe.
• 2002 – Expelled student Robert Steinhäuser murdered 16 people and wounded seven others before committing suicide at the Gutenberg-Gymnasium Erfurt in Erfurt, Germany.

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8480 euros gagnés en Mars 2016

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April 25 Wikipedia featured article

Japanese dead at Kaiapit

The Battle of Kaiapit was fought in 1943 between Australian and Japanese forces in New Guinea during the Finisterre Range campaign of World War II. Following landings at Nadzab and at Lae, the Allies attempted to exploit their success with an advance into the upper Markham Valley, starting with Kaiapit (pictured). The Australian 2/6th Independent Company flew in to the valley from Port Moresby in 13 USAAF C-47 Dakotas, making a difficult landing on a rough airstrip. Unaware that a much larger Japanese force was also headed for Kaiapit and Nadzab, the company attacked the village on 19 September to secure the area so that it could be developed into an airfield. They then held it against a strong counterattack. During two days of fighting the larger force, the Australians suffered relatively few losses. Their victory at Kaiapit enabled the Australian 7th Division to be flown in to the upper Markham Valley, stopping the Japanese from threatening Lae or Nadzab, where a major airbase was being developed. The victory also led to the capture of the Ramu Valley, which provided new forward fighter airstrips for the air war. (Full article...)

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On this day: April 25

April 25: Red Hat Society Day; Feast day of Mark the Evangelist (Christianity); Anzac Day in Australia and New Zealand (1915); Liberation Day in Italy; Elbe Day in Russia and the United States (1945)

The double helix structure of DNA

• 775 – Forces of the Abbasid Caliphate crushed those of rebelling Armenian princes in the Battle of Bagrevand
• 1644 – The Ming dynasty of China fell when the Chongzhen Emperor committed suicide during a peasant rebellion led by Li Zicheng.
• 1846 – An open conflict between the military forces of the United States and Mexico began over the disputed border of Texas north of the Rio Grande and south of the Nueces River, later serving as a primary justification for Mexican–American War.
• 1953 – "Molecular Structure of Nucleic Acids" by molecular biologists James Watson and Francis Crick was first published in the scientific journal Nature, describing the discovery of the double helix structure (pictured) of DNA.
• 1986 – Mswati III was crowned King of Swaziland, succeeding his father Sobhuza II.

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April 24 Wikipedia featured article

The Pillar in 1831

Nelson's Pillar was a large granite column capped by a statue of Horatio Nelson, erected in the centre of O'Connell Street, Dublin, Ireland in 1809. It was severely damaged by explosives in March 1966 and demolished a week later. The monument was erected after the euphoria following Nelson's victory at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. It proved a popular tourist attraction but provoked aesthetic and political controversy, and there were frequent calls for it to be removed, or replaced with a memorial to an Irish hero. Nevertheless it remained, even after Ireland became a republic in 1948. Although influential literary figures defended the Pillar on historical and cultural grounds, its destruction just before the 50th anniversary of the Easter Rising was, on the whole, well received by the Irish public. The police could not identify those responsible; when in 2010 a former republican activist admitted planting the explosives, he was not charged. The Pillar was finally replaced in 2003 with the Spire of Dublin. Relics of the Pillar are found in various Dublin locations, and its memory is preserved in numerous works of Irish literature. (Full article...)

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On this day: April 24

April 24: Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day; Republic Day in The Gambia (1970)

Thutmose III

• 1479 BC – Thutmose III (statue pictured) became the sixth Pharaoh of the Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt, although during the first 22 years of the reign he was co-regent with his aunt, Hatshepsut.
• 1704 – The first issue of The Boston News-Letter, the first continuously published newspaper in British North America, was published.
• 1916 – Irish republicans led by Patrick Pearse began the Easter Rising against British rule in Ireland, and proclaimed the Irish Republic an independent state.
• 1933 – Nazi Germany began its persecution of Jehovah's Witnesses by shutting down the Watch Tower Society office in Magdeburg.
• 2013 – A building in the Savar Upazila of Dhaka, Bangladesh, collapsed, resulting in over 1,100 deaths, making it the deadliest accidental structural failure in modern human history.

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On this day: April 23

April 23: Saint George's Day in various countries

Edmund Ironside

• 1016 – Edmund Ironside (pictured) became King of England, reigning for only seven months before the country was conquered by Cnut the Great.
• 1516 – The most well-known version of the Reinheitsgebot, the German Beer Purity Law was adopted across the entirety of Bavaria.
• 1918 – First World War: The British Royal Navy conducted a raid on the Belgian port of Bruges-Zeebrugge.
• 1951 – American journalist William N. Oatis was arrested for espionage by the Communist government of Czechoslovakia.
• 2010 – Governor of Arizona Jan Brewer signed the controversial anti-illegal immigration bill SB 1070 into law.

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April 23 Wikipedia featured article

Stanley Price Weir (23 April 1866 – 14 November 1944) was a public servant and Australian Army officer. He was awarded the Volunteer Officers' Decoration in 1908, and appointed a justice of the peace in 1914. During World War I, he commanded the 10th Battalion of the Australian Imperial Force during the landing at Anzac Cove and the Gallipoli Campaign against the Ottoman Turks, and during the battles of Pozières and Mouquet Farm in France. Weir returned to Australia at his own request at the age of 50 in late 1916, when he was appointed as the first South Australian Public Service Commissioner. In 1917 he was awarded the Distinguished Service Order and was mentioned in dispatches for his performance at Pozières and Mouquet Farm. On his retirement from the Australian Military Forces in 1921, he was given an honorary promotion to brigadier general, only the second South Australia-born officer to reach this rank. Before his retirement as Public Service Commissioner in 1931, Weir was the chairman of both the Central Board of Health and the Public Relief Board. He led an active retirement, contributing to several religious, charitable and welfare organisations. (Full article...)

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April 22 Wikipedia featured article

Box art

Gravity Bone is a freeware first-person adventure video game developed by Brendon Chung through his studio, Blendo Games, and released on August 28, 2008. The game employs a modified version of id Software's id Tech 2 engine—originally used for Quake 2—and incorporates music originally performed by Xavier Cugat for films by director Wong Kar-wai. Four incarnations of the game were produced during its one-year development; the first featured more first-person shooter elements than the released version. Subsequent versions included more spy-oriented gameplay. Gravity Bone received critical acclaim from video game journalists. It was called "a pleasure to experience" by Charles Onyett from IGN, and was compared to games such as Team Fortress 2 and Portal. The game was praised for its visual style, atmosphere, cohesive story, and ability to quickly catch the player's interest. It received the "Best Arthouse Game" award in Game Tunnel's Special Awards of 2008. A sequel released in 2012, Thirty Flights of Loving, was also critically acclaimed, mostly for its novel nonlinear storytelling. (Full article...)

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On this day: April 22

April 22: Earth Day; Fast of the Firstborn begins at dawn and Passover begins at sunset (Judaism, 2016)

"The Old Gate", Tsinghua University

• 1622 – An Anglo-Persian force combined to take over the Portuguese garrison at Hormuz Island in the Persian Gulf.
• 1889 – Over 50,000 people rushed to claim a piece of the available two million acres (8,000 km²) in the Unassigned Lands, the present-day US state of Oklahoma, entirely founding the brand-new Oklahoma City.
• 1911 – Tsinghua University ("The Old Gate" pictured), one of the leading universities in mainland China, was founded, funded by an unexpected surplus in indemnities paid by the Qing Dynasty to the United States as a result of the Boxer Rebellion.
• 1948 – Civil War in Mandatory Palestine: The Jewish paramilitary group Haganah captured Haifa from the Arab Liberation Army.
• 2000 – In a predawn raid, US Immigration and Naturalization Service agents seized six-year-old Elián González from his relatives' home in Miami, Florida, and returned him to his Cuban father.

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April 21 Wikipedia featured article

Replicas of the "Twin Sisters", cannons used in the Battle of San Jacinto

The Runaway Scrape was the 1836 escape of Texas residents from the encroaching Mexican Army of Operations under the command of Antonio López de Santa Anna during the Texas Revolution. Civilian evacuations began on the Gulf Coast in January after the vanguard of the Mexican army crossed the Rio Grande to quell the insurrection of American colonists and Tejanos (Mexicans born in Texas). Weeks later, news of the Battle of the Alamo and the Goliad massacre created a state of panic. Sam Houston was the Texas commander-in-chief of raw recruits who had little or no combat experience. Fleeing civilians moved in tandem with Houston's troops for protection, as he sought a safe training camp for his soldiers. The pursuing Mexican army had orders to execute all rebel combatants, and it cut a swath of destruction in its search for them. After a mere three weeks training near the Brazos River, the Texas troops finally parted ways with the civilians, who were given a military escort to safety. Houston turned his army southeast and engaged the Mexican army at the April 21 Battle of San Jacinto that resulted in Santa Anna's surrender. (Full article...)

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On this day: April 21

April 21: Fast of the Firstborn begins at dawn (Judaism, 2016)

Henry VIII of England

• 900 – A debt was pardoned by the Datu of Tondo on the island of Luzon, as inscribed on the Laguna Copperplate Inscription, the earliest known written document found in the Philippines.
• 1509 – Henry VIII (pictured) became King of England, following the death of his father Henry VII, eventually becoming a significant figure in the history of the English monarchy.
• 1863 – After the Ottoman Empire exiled him from Baghdad, Bahá'u'lláh, the founder of the Bahá'í Faith, began his twelve-day stay in the Garden of Ridván where he declared his mission as "He whom God shall make manifest".
• 1914 – Mexican Revolution: The United States detained a German steamer carrying materiel for the Mexican federal government.
• 1970 – In response to a long-running dispute over wheat production quotas, the Principality of Hutt River proclaimed its secession from Western Australia.

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April 20 Wikipedia featured article

Hurricane Florence

The 1994 Atlantic hurricane season produced only seven named tropical cyclones and three hurricanes, and was the only Atlantic hurricane season of the 1990s with no major hurricanes (Category 3 or higher on the Saffir–Simpson hurricane scale). Tropical activity lasted from Alberto's formation on June 30 to Gordon's weakening on November 21. Tropical Storm Alberto produced significant rainfall and flooding in the Southeastern United States, damaging or destroying over 18,000 homes. In August, Tropical Storm Beryl produced its heaviest rainfall in Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina. Along with a tornado it spawned, Beryl caused numerous injuries. Tropical Storm Debby killed nine people in the Caribbean in September. Florence was the most intense hurricane, at Category 2, but never made landfall. Extreme flooding and mudslides from Hurricane Gordon caused around 1,122 fatalities in Haiti and other deaths over the course of six landfalls from Costa Rica to North Carolina. A nor'easter in December may have had tropical characteristics, but was not classified as a tropical system. (Full article...)

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On this day: April 20

April 20: Ridván begins at sunset (Bahá'í Faith); 4/20 (cannabis culture)

Pope Leo XIII

• 1657 – Anglo-Spanish War: An English fleet under Admiral Robert Blake attacked a Spanish treasure fleet at Santa Cruz de Tenerife in the Spanish Canary Islands.
• 1828 – French explorer René Caillié became the first confirmed non-Muslim to enter Timbuktu, for which he later received a 10,000-franc prize from the Société de géographie.
• 1884 – Pope Leo XIII (pictured) published the encyclical Humanum genus, denouncing Freemasonry as well as a number of beliefs and practices purportedly associated with it such as popular sovereignty and the separation of church and state.
• 1968 – British Member of Parliament Enoch Powell made his controversial "Rivers of Blood" speech in opposition to immigration and anti-discrimination legislation, resulting in his removal from the Shadow Cabinet.
• 1998 – The violent German revolutionary group known as the Red Army Faction announced that it had dissolved.

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April 19 Wikipedia featured article

Male Sphodromantis viridis

The mantises are an order of insects containing over 2,400 species and about 430 genera in 15 families. The largest family is the Mantidae. Distributed worldwide in temperate and tropical habitats, mantids have triangular heads with bulging eyes supported on flexible necks, and elongated bodies with or without wings. All mantises have greatly enlarged forelegs adapted for catching and gripping prey; their stationary upright posture, with forearms folded, has led to the common name "praying mantis". They are mostly ambush predators, but a few ground-dwelling species actively seek prey. They live for about a year; in cooler climates, the adults lay eggs in autumn, and die. Protected by their hard capsule, the eggs hatch in the spring. Mantises are sometimes confused with stick insects (Phasmatodea), other elongated insects such as grasshoppers (Orthoptera), or other insects with raptorial forelegs such as mantisflies (Mantispidae). Mantises were considered to have supernatural powers by early civilizations, including Ancient Greece, Ancient Egypt, and Assyria. They are among the insects most commonly kept as pets. (Full article...)

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On this day: April 19

April 19: Feast of Saint Alphege (Western Christianity)

Nazi troops round up Warsaw Ghetto residents

• 797 – Byzantine emperor Constantine VI was captured, blinded, and imprisoned by the supporters of his mother Irene.
• 1713 – With no living male heirs, Holy Roman Emperor Charles VI issued the Pragmatic Sanction to ensure one of his daughters would inherit the Habsburg lands.
• 1861 – American Civil War: The first bloodshed of the war took place when Confederate sympathizers in Baltimore, Maryland, attacked members of the Massachusetts militia en route to Washington, D.C.
• 1943 – The Holocaust: Nazi troops entered the Warsaw Ghetto to round up the remaining Jews (pictured), sparking the first mass uprising in Poland against the German occupation.
• 1989 – A gun turret on board the United States Navy battleship Iowa exploded, killing 47 sailors.

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