Wikipedia:Main Page history/2016 December 17

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From today's featured article

Final Fantasy XIII is a science fiction role-playing video game, initially released by Square Enix for PlayStation 3 on December 17, 2009, and later for Xbox 360, Microsoft Windows, and mobile devices. This edition in the series includes a new character-development system, as well as the return of summoned monsters, the chocobo race, and airships. The former soldier Lightning begins her fight along with a band of allies to save her sister from both the government and a deadly fate as an unwilling servant to a god-like being. Final Fantasy XIII is the first game to use Square Enix's Crystal Tools engine and is the flagship title of the Fabula Nova Crystallis collection of games. It received mostly positive reviews from video game publications for its graphics, presentation, and battle system. The game's story received a mixed response, and its linearity was criticized. Selling 1.7 million copies in Japan in 2009, Final Fantasy XIII became the fastest-selling title in the history of the series. It sold over 7 million copies overall and led to two sequel games. (Full article...)

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Did you know...

Malagasy white-eye

... that the Malagasy white-eye (pictured) sometimes indulges in mutual preening?
... that the British cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason signed his first record deal on a bus named in his honour?
... that the Swarmjet system was a proposed short-range anti-ballistic missile that fired thousands of unguided rockets like a shotgun against incoming nuclear warheads?
... that U.S. Representative-elect Ted Budd won his first election with 20% of the vote in a 17-candidate field?
... that the idea for Through the Wilderness, a Madonna tribute album, came in a dream to Paul Beahan?
... that a plot led by Joseph Harmatz to poison 12,000 SS officers, held as POWs after World War II, was part of a revenge effort "to kill six million Germans, one for every Jew slaughtered by the Germans"?
... that the 1937 Tamil-language film Bhaktha Sri Thyagaraja is based on the life of the Carnatic musician Tyagaraja?
... that Becca Pizzi completed seven marathons on seven continents in seven days, and accepted a marriage proposal on the mound before throwing out the first pitch at Fenway Park?

In the news

Bill English

Bill English (pictured) becomes Prime Minister of New Zealand.
A bombing at St. Peter and St. Paul's Church in Cairo, Egypt, kills at least 25 people and injures 49 others.
A church collapses in Uyo, Nigeria, killing at least 23 people.
Two explosions outside a football stadium in Istanbul, Turkey, kill 46 people and injure more than 150 others.
A freight train derails, explodes and catches fire at Hitrino, Bulgaria, killing 7 people and injuring 29 others.

On this day...

December 17: National Day in Bhutan (1907)

Siege of Godesberg

1583 – Cologne War: Forces under Ernest of Bavaria defeated the troops under Gebhard Truchsess von Waldburg at the Siege of Godesberg (pictured).
1862 – American Civil War: Union General Ulysses S. Grant issued General Order No. 11, expelling Jews from Tennessee, Mississippi, and Kentucky.
1907 – Ugyen Wangchuck was crowned the first King of Bhutan.
1926 – A coup d'état by the Lithuanian military replaced the democratically elected President Kazys Grinius with Antanas Smetona.
2010 – Tunisian street vendor Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire in protest to police harassment, triggering the Tunisian Revolution.

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Today's featured picture

The choir at St Paul's Cathedral, an Anglican cathedral that sits on Ludgate Hill at the highest point of the City of London. The seat of the Bishop of London and the mother church of the Diocese of London, the present church dates from the late 17th century and was designed in the English Baroque style by Sir Christopher Wren. It was the tallest building in London from 1710 to 1967 and remains the second-largest church building in area in the United Kingdom, after Liverpool Cathedral.

Photograph: David Iliff

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