Halo Wars (released 2009) is a real-time strategy video game developed by Ensemble Studios and published by Microsoft Game Studios for the Xbox 360video game console. The game is set in the science fiction universe of the Halo series in the year 2531, 21 years before the events of Halo: Combat Evolved. The player leads human soldiers aboard the warship Spirit of Fire in an effort to stop an ancient fleet of ships from falling into the hands of the genocidal alien Covenant. Halo Wars was unveiled at the 2006 X06 Xbox show. Ensemble was closed by Microsoft before the game's release, but Robot Entertainment was founded soon after by many of Ensemble's former employees; this new company continued to support Halo Wars with updates and downloadable content. The game received generally positive reviews. Reviewers lauded the game's pre-rendered cinematics, attention to detail in replicating the Halo universe, and intuitive control scheme. Complaints against the game included the lack of an option to play as the Covenant faction in campaign mode as well as the lack of strategic options during play. The game sold one million units worldwide through March 2009. (Full article...)
747 BC – According to Ptolemy, the reign of the Babylonian king Nabonassar began and with it, a new era characterized by the systematic maintenance of chronologically precise historical records.
Formica rufa, one of the seventeen species of ants described by Linnaeus (1758) in his Systema Naturae
Twenty ant subfamilies are currently recognized, of which sixteen contain extanttaxa, while four are exclusively fossil. Ants (family Formicidae) first arose during the mid-Cretaceous, more than 100 million years ago, associated with the rise of flowering plants and an increase in forest ground litter. They have come to occupy virtually all major terrestrial habitats, with the exception of tundra and cold ever-wet forests, and are the most species-rich of all social insects, with more than 12,000 described species and many others awaiting description. In volume 1 of Systema Naturae, Linnaeus (1758) described seventeen species of ants (F. rufa pictured), all of which he placed in the single genus Formica. Within a few decades additional genera had been recognized, and this trend continued in the ensuing years, together with the development of a more complex hierarchical classification in which genera were apportioned among subfamilies and tribes. The ant species described by Linnaeus are now dispersed in eleven different genera, belonging to four subfamilies. (Full list...)
Victor Hugo (1802–1885) was a French poet, novelist, and dramatist of the Romantic movement who is considered one of the greatest and best-known French writers. He is recognized for his poetry, including Les Contemplations and La Légende des siècles, as well as the novels The Hunchback of Notre-Dame (1831) and Les Misérables (1862). Though a committed royalist when he was young, Hugo later changed his views and became a passionate supporter of republicanism; his work touches upon most of the political and social issues and the artistic trends of his time. His legacy has been honoured in many ways; for some years his portrait appeared on the 5-franc banknote.
This Wikipedia is written in English. Started in 2001 (2001), it currently contains 5,089,377 articles.
Many other Wikipedias are available; some of the largest are listed below.
_sixth_take.jpg)
