Wikipedia:Main Page history/2014 July 19

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From today's featured article

McDonald's Cycle Center is an indoor bike station in Millennium Park in the Loop community area of Chicago. The city built the center and opened it July 2004. Since June 2006, it has been sponsored by McDonald's and other partners, including city departments and bicycle advocacy organizations. The bike station, which serves bicycle commuters and utility cyclists, provides lockers, showers, a snack bar with outdoor summer seating, bike repair, bike rental and 300 bicycle parking spaces. The Cycle Center is accessible by membership and day pass. It also accommodates runners and inline skaters, and provides space for a Chicago Police Department Bike Patrol Group. Planning for the Cycle Center was part of the larger "Bike 2010 Plan", in which the city aimed to make itself more accommodating to bicycle commuters. Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley was an advocate of the plan. Suburban Chicago-based McDonald's controversially claimed that their sponsorship of the Cycle Center fit with their efforts to promote health. Environmentalists, urban planners and cycling enthusiasts around the world have expressed interest in the Cycle Center, and want to match its urban planning and transit-oriented development success story. (Full article...)

Part of the Millennium Park series, one of Wikipedia's featured topics.

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Did you know...

From Wikipedia's new and recently improved content:

... that the Speaker of the Niuean Assembly is responsible for ensuring the Seal of Niue (pictured) is not misused?
... that the Dota 2 esports tournament The International 2014 has a prize pool of more than US$10 million—larger than that of the 2014 Masters Tournament?
... that in 1952, British MP Eric Bullus proposed the reintroduction of flogging as a criminal punishment?
... that Tansen, directed by Jayant Desai and based on the life of musician Tansen, was the second-highest grossing Indian film of 1943?
... that in 1765, Scottish nabob John Johnstone, aged 31, returned from India with a fortune equivalent to £25 million in 2014?
... that there are 122 erosion sites on East Branch Chillisquaque Creek?
... that Elvis impersonator James Brown is best known for songs that Elvis never recorded, sung in the style of Elvis?

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In the news

Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 (aircraft pictured), en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, is shot down in eastern Ukraine, killing all 298 people on board.
Typhoon Rammasun causes at least 40 deaths in the Philippines.
The BRICS summit is held in Brazil.
A train derails on the Moscow Metro, killing at least 23 people and injuring at least 160 others.
The Church of England votes to allow women to be ordained as bishops.
The FIFA World Cup concludes with Germany defeating Argentina in the final.
The Party of Miro Cerar wins a plurality in the Slovenian parliamentary election.

Ongoing: Gaza offensive – Ukrainian unrest
Recent deaths: Elaine Stritch – Johnny Winter – Lorin Maazel

On this day...

July 19: Burmese Martyrs' Day

AD 64 – The Great Fire of Rome started among the shops around the Circus Maximus, eventually destroying three of fourteen Roman districts and severely damaging seven others.
1702 – Great Northern War: A numerically superior Polish–Saxon army of Augustus II the Strong, operating from an advantageous defensive position, was defeated by a Swedish army half its size in the Battle of Klissow.
1848 – The two-day Women's Rights Convention, the first women's rights and feminist convention held in the United States, opened in Seneca Falls, New York.
1981 – French President François Mitterrand privately revealed to U.S. President Ronald Reagan (both pictured) documents showing that the Soviets had been stealing American technological research and development.
1992 – A car bomb killed anti-Mafia judge Paolo Borsellino and five policemen in Palermo, Italy, less than two months after the murder of his friend and colleague Giovanni Falcone.

More anniversaries: July 18 – July 19 – July 20

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Today's featured picture

A species of Odontomyia, from the soldier fly family; these small insects are generally scavengers.

Photo: Muhammad Mahdi Karim

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