Wikipedia:Main Page history/2016 August 11

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From today's featured article

System Shock 2 is a first-person action role-playing survival horror video game for Microsoft Windows, OS X and Linux, first released on August 11, 1999. It was designed by Ken Levine and co-developed by Irrational Games and Looking Glass Studios. Originally written as a standalone title, it became a sequel to the 1994 PC game System Shock after Electronic Arts signed on as the publisher. In a cyberpunk depiction of 2114, the player assumes the role of a soldier trying to stem the outbreak of a genetic infection that has devastated a starship. As in System Shock, gameplay consists of combat and exploration aided by acquired special abilities such as hacking and psionics. System Shock 2 received positive reviews, but failed to meet commercial sales expectations. Critics later determined that the game was highly influential in subsequent game design, particularly on first-person shooters, and considered it far ahead of its time. It has been included in several lists of all-time best video games. OtherSide Entertainment has been licensed the rights to produce a sequel, System Shock 3. (Full article...)

Part of the Looking Glass Studios video games series, one of Wikipedia's featured topics.

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In the news

Hurricane Earl

At least 90 people are killed during protests against human rights abuses and corruption in Ethiopia.
More than 70 people are killed in a suicide bombing and shooting in Quetta, Pakistan.
Landslides caused by Hurricane Earl (satellite image pictured) kill at least 41 people across Mexico.
Flooding in north-western Macedonia kills more than 20 people and injures dozens of others.
The Summer Olympics open in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

On this day...

August 11: Independence Day in Chad (1960)

Hedy Lamarr

1492 – The first papal conclave held in the Sistine Chapel elected Roderic Borja as Pope Alexander VI to succeed Pope Innocent VIII.
1828 – William Corder was hanged at Bury St Edmunds, England, for the murder of Maria Marten at the Red Barn.
1942 – Actress Hedy Lamarr (pictured) and composer George Antheil received a patent for their "Secret Communications System", an early technique of frequency-hopping spread spectrum that later became the basis for many forms of today's wireless communication systems.
1965 – Violent race riots began in Watts, Los Angeles, California, lasting for six days and leaving 34 people dead and 1,032 others injured.
2012 – At least 306 people were killed and 3,000 others injured in a pair of earthquakes near Tabriz, Iran.

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Today's featured picture

The sharp-tailed sandpiper (Calidris acuminata) is a small wader. It breeds in the boggy tundra of northeast Asia and is strongly migratory, wintering in south east Asia and Australasia.

Photograph: JJ Harrison

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