Wikipedia:Main Page history/2016 April 3

From today's featured article

Alan McNicoll (1908–1987) was a senior officer in the Royal Australian Navy (RAN) and a diplomat. He graduated from the Royal Australian Naval College in 1926. Attached to the Royal Navy in the Second World War, he was decorated with the George Medal in 1941 for disarming enemy ordnance. He was posted for staff duties with the Admiralty in September 1943 and helped plan the Normandy landings, then returned to Australia in October 1944. After serving in a series of naval commands and chairing the planning committee for the British nuclear tests on the Montebello Islands, he returned to London to attend the Imperial Defence College in 1955. He occupied staff positions in London and Canberra before being posted to the Naval Board as Chief of Personnel in 1960. This was followed by a term as Flag Officer Commanding HM Australian Fleet and, in 1965, a promotion to vice admiral and Chief of Navy, overseeing an extensive modernisation of the Australian fleet. Knighted the next year, he presided over the RAN contribution to the Vietnam War before serving as the inaugural Australian Ambassador to Turkey for five years. (Full article...)

A bean dip

... that bean dip (example pictured) may be prepared using reconstituted dried bean flakes?
... that the initiation ceremonies for Japan's blind necromancers, known as itako, involve "sleeplessness, semi-starvation and intense cold"?
... that Kansas v. Carr included the final majority opinion written by Justice Antonin Scalia before his death in February 2016?
... that the bass-baritone Jacques Villisech recorded Bach cantatas, including the Actus tragicus, the Hunting Cantata, and the secular solo cantata Amore traditore?
... that Barcelona's Les Tres Torres district is named after three large houses built there between 1901 and 1903?
... that Professor Mary Ryan earned her BA from the Royal University of Ireland, though rules forbade her attending University classes?
... that although Konsert Satu Suara, Vol. 2 served as a contingency plan for Siti Nurhaliza, it was later recognized as the highest-grossing, locally produced concert at Istana Budaya for 2015?
... that Japanese eelgrass is believed to have travelled to North America in the company of oysters?

EgyptAir Airbus A320-200 involved in hijack

An overpass collapses in Kolkata, India, killing at least 25 people.
EgyptAir Flight 181 (aircraft pictured) is hijacked shortly after takeoff and forced to land at Larnaca International Airport in Cyprus.
A suicide bombing in Lahore, Pakistan, targeting Christians celebrating Easter, kills at least 74 people and injures more than 340.
The Syrian Army recaptures Palmyra from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.
In rowing, Cambridge win the 162nd Boat Race and Oxford win the 71st Women's Boat Race.

Oscar Wilde

1043 – Edward the Confessor was crowned King of England, the last king of the House of Wessex.
1860 – The Pony Express, a mail service that became the most direct means of long distance communication to the American West, began operation.
1895 – The libel trial instigated by Irish author Oscar Wilde (pictured) began, eventually resulting in Wilde's arrest, trial and imprisonment on charges of gross indecency.
1922 – Joseph Stalin became the first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
1946 – Imperial Japanese Army officer Masaharu Homma was executed for war crimes relating to the Bataan Death March.
1996 – A US Air Force CT-43 crashed into a mountainside while attempting an instrument approach to Dubrovnik Airport in Dubrovnik, Croatia, killing Secretary of Commerce Ron Brown and all the other 34 people on board.

The Eckert IV projection is an equal-area pseudocylindrical map projection. The length of polar lines are half that of the equator, and lines of longitude are semiellipses, or portions of ellipses. It was first described by Max Eckert in 1906.

Map: Strebe, using Geocart

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