Wikipedia:Main Page history/2015 March 15

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From today's featured article

The Peru national football team has represented Peru in international football since 1927. Organised by the Peruvian Football Federation, it is one of ten members of FIFA's South American Football Confederation (CONMEBOL), playing most home matches at the Estadio Nacional in Lima. Peru took part in the inaugural FIFA World Cup in 1930 and the 1936 Olympic football competition. Goalkeeper Juan Valdivieso and forwards Teodoro Fernández and Alejandro Villanueva led the squad to wins in the 1938 Bolivarian Games and the 1939 Copa América. The team won the Copa América in 1975 and qualified for three World Cups in the 1970s with Hugo Sotil, defender Héctor Chumpitaz, and Teófilo Cubillas, the player often regarded as Peru's greatest. Peru last qualified for the World Cup in 1982 (team pictured). Players wear white shirts adorned with a red diagonal stripe, Peru's national colours. This basic design has been used continuously since 1936, and gives rise to the team's common Spanish nickname, la Blanquirroja ("the white-and-red"). The team has longstanding rivalries with Chile and Ecuador. (Full article...)

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Did you know...

From Wikipedia's new and recently improved content:

... that nobody knows what the newly coined Chinese word duang (pictured) means?
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... that Julia Quinn won back-to-back RITA Awards for her Regency romances On the Way To the Wedding and The Secret Diaries of Miss Miranda Cheever?
... that Ajith Kumar starred in Tamil cinema's first prequel?
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... that after Gabriel Langfeldt diagnosed Knut Hamsun as having "permanently impaired mental capabilities", Hamsun portrayed Langfeldt negatively in his book On Overgrown Paths?
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... that Karen Boccalero, founding director of a community arts center, was remembered as a "progressive, chain-smoking, cussing nun"?

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In the news

In Vanuatu, Cyclone Pam (satellite image pictured) causes at least eight deaths, with dozens more reported but unconfirmed.
German architect Frei Otto wins the Pritzker Prize shortly before his death.
Ten people, including French athletes Florence Arthaud, Camille Muffat and Alexis Vastine, are killed in a mid-air collision between two helicopters in Argentina.
The Iraqi government reports that the pre-Islamic cities of Hatra and Nimrud have been destroyed by ISIL, who claimed they were blasphemous.
A series of suicide bombings in Maiduguri, Nigeria, kills 58 people and wounds more than 140 others.
NASA's Dawn spacecraft enters orbit around the dwarf planet Ceres.

Ongoing: Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant
Recent deaths: Terry Pratchett – Sam Simon

On this day...

March 15: Ides of March; Laetare Sunday (Western Christianity, 2015); National Day in Hungary (1848)

44 BC – Dictator Julius Caesar of the Roman Republic was stabbed to death (painting by Vincenzo Camuccini pictured) by Marcus Junius Brutus and several other Roman senators.
1311 – The Catalan Company defeated Walter V, Count of Brienne in the Battle of Halmyros and took control of the Duchy of Athens, a Crusader state in Greece.
1875 – Archbishop of New York John McCloskey was named the first cardinal in the United States.
1945 – World War II: The Soviet Red Army began the Upper Silesian Offensive aimed at capturing the industrial and raw materials resources located in Upper Silesia.
1990 – Iraqi authorities hanged freelance Iranian reporter Farzad Bazoft for spying for Israel.

More anniversaries: March 14 – March 15 – March 16

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It is now March 15, 2015 (UTC) – Reload this page

Today's featured picture

The Palm House, built in the University of Helsinki Botanical Garden in 1889 to house tropical plants. It has since been refurbished several times, most recently between 1996 and 1998. The greenhouse is home to more than 800 different species of plants, and the garden grounds to more than 2,800 plants of different origins.

Photograph: Alvesgaspar

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