Wikipedia:Main Page history/2016 August 27

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From today's featured article

Metroid Prime 3: Corruption is a first-person action-adventure game developed by Retro Studios and published by Nintendo for the Wii video game console. It is the ninth game in the Metroid series, and the final entry in the Metroid Prime trilogy—excluding two spin-off titles. It was released in North America and Europe in 2007, and in Japan the following year. The Wii Remote and Nunchuk devices are featured in a new control scheme that took a year to develop, delaying the game's release. The story of Corruption is set six months after the events of Metroid Prime 2: Echoes, and follows bounty hunter Samus Aran as she assists the Galactic Federation in its fight against the Space Pirates. While fending off a Space Pirate assault, Samus and her fellow bounty hunters are attacked by her doppelgänger, Dark Samus, who incapacitates them with a mutagenic material called Phazon. After losing contact with the other hunters, the Federation sends Samus on a mission to determine what happened to them. During the course of the game, Samus works to prevent the Phazon from spreading from planet to planet while being slowly corrupted by the Phazon herself. (Full article...)

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Did you know...

Denton Burdick

... that when he served in the Oregon House of Representatives, Denton G. Burdick (pictured) represented a district that was nearly the size of Pennsylvania?
... that the Sugababes' fragrances Tempt, Tease and Touch were among The Perfume Shop's first releases after opening in-store outlets in Superdrug stores?
... that Hero of the Soviet Union Andrey Shebalkov was deprived of his title on charges of sending anti-Soviet letters?
... that the recreation of Botticelli's The Birth of Venus by the Indian realist painter Gopal Swami Khetanchi showed a pearl-clad Rajasthani woman coming out of a lotus?
... that Carl Sagan lived in an Egyptian Revival tomb built on a cliff halfway down a gorge?
... that in 1949, the Bristol Rovers footballer Vic Lambden married one of his team's fans?
... that "Elector Under Will of Oliver Smith" is the title of an elected official in some towns in Massachusetts?
... that philosopher Tamara Horowitz stopped looking in mirrors for two years in her twenties?

In the news

Proxima Centauri

The Iraqi Armed Forces capture Qayyarah from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.
The exoplanet Proxima Centauri b is discovered in the habitable zone around Proxima Centauri (pictured), the closest star to the Sun.
A magnitude 6.2 earthquake hits central Italy, killing at least 278 people.
The Summer Olympics conclude in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
At least 54 people are killed when a wedding is attacked by a suicide bomber in Gaziantep, southern Turkey.

On this day...

August 27: Independence Day in Moldova (1991)

Edwin Drake

1859 – Edwin Drake (pictured) successfully drilled for oil in Titusville, Pennsylvania, resulting in the Pennsylvania oil rush, the first oil boom in the United States.
1896 – The United Kingdom and Zanzibar went to war, with Zanzibar surrendering less than an hour after the conflict broke out.
1979 – In two separate attacks, IRA bombs killed 18 British soldiers near Warrenpoint, and British admiral Louis Mountbatten and three others in County Sligo.
1991 – Dissolution of the Soviet Union: Moldova declared its independence during the aftermath of the failure of the Soviet coup d'état attempt.
2009 – The Burmese military junta and ethnic armies began three days of violent clashes in the Kokang Special Region.

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Today's featured picture

Quaker guns in former Confederate fortifications at Manassas Junction, Virginia, in March 1862. Quaker guns were widely used as a deception tactic in warfare during the 18th and 19th centuries. Although resembling an actual cannon, the Quaker gun was simply a wooden log, usually painted black. The name derives from the Religious Society of Friends, or Quakers, who have traditionally held a religious opposition to war and violence in the Peace Testimony.

Photograph: George N. Barnard and James F. Gibson; restoration: Adam Cuerden

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