Wikipedia:Main Page history/2017 September 1

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From today's featured article

King's Highway 71 is a provincially maintained highway in the Canadian province of Ontario. Part of the Trans-Canada Highway, the 194-kilometre (121 mi) route travels west from the Fort Frances-International Falls International Bridge in Fort Frances, concurrently with Highway 11, for 40 kilometres (25 mi). At Chapple, Highway 71 branches from Highway 11, travelling 154 kilometres (96 mi) north to a junction with Highway 17 just east of Kenora. The concurrent portion of the highway follows the Cloverleaf Trail, which was completed by the end of the 1880s and improved over the next several decades. The portion between Highway 11 and Highway 17 follows the Heenan Highway, which connects the Rainy River region with Kenora and the remainder of Ontario's road network; before its opening the area was accessible only via the United States. Both highways were incorporated into the provincial highway system in 1937 following the merger of the Department of Highways and the Department of Northern Development. (Full article...)

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Did you know...

Among the Sierra Nevada, California

... that when Helen Huntington Hull inherited Among the Sierra Nevada, California (pictured) by Albert Bierstadt, she had it glued directly to a wall of her mansion?
... that the Daniel Webster Debate Society of Phillips Exeter Academy, founded in 1818, is the oldest secondary school literary society in the United States?
... that Elisabeth Kulman, Gora in the premiere of Reimann's Medea at the Vienna State Opera, changed from soprano to mezzo, and from opera singer to concert singer?
... that Steve Smith has scored seven of his twenty Test centuries against India?
... that Lillie Rose Ernst, the first woman assistant superintendent of instruction in the St. Louis public school system, was the mentor of The Potters?
... that forest rings had gone unnoticed by geologists until aerial photography became a common surveying tool in the 1950s?
... that Ghanaian entrepreneur and journalist Ibrahim Mohammed Awal, who heads the newly created Ministry of Business Development, has pledged to triple the country's GDP?
... that American Jewish cuisine has been influenced by a geographical gefilte fish line?

In the news

Floyd Mayweather Jr.

In boxing, Floyd Mayweather Jr. (pictured) defeats mixed martial artist Conor McGregor.
The Women's Rugby World Cup concludes with New Zealand defeating England in the final.
Hurricane Harvey makes landfall in Texas, causing severe flooding and at least 30 fatalities.
At least 36 people are killed in riots in Northern India after Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh is convicted of rape.
Typhoon Hato strikes South China and Vietnam, killing at least 26 people.

On this day...

September 1

Martha, the last passenger pigeon

1774 – Thomas Gage, royal governor of the Province of Massachusetts Bay, ordered soldiers to remove gunpowder from a magazine, causing Patriots to prepare for war.
1804 – German astronomer Karl Ludwig Harding discovered one of the largest main belt asteroids, naming it Juno after the Roman goddess.
1914 – The passenger pigeon (pictured), which once had a population of at least 3 billion birds, became extinct when the last individual died in captivity.
1969 – A bloodless coup led by Muammar Gaddafi overthrew Idris I of Libya.
1983 – A Soviet jet interceptor shot down the civilian Korean Air Lines Flight 007 near Sakhalin Island in the North Pacific, killing all 246 passengers and 23 crew on board.

Hilda Rix Nicholas (b. 1884) · Yasuo Kuniyoshi (b. 1893) · Charles Atangana (d. 1943)

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From today's featured list

The Line 2 platform of Xinejiekou Station

The Nanjing Metro rapid transit system has 128 stations. Nanjing Metro is a rapid transit system in the Chinese city of Nanjing, with stations in nine of the city's eleven districts. It is constructed, maintained, and operated by the Nanjing Metro Group Company. The results of Nanjing's 2015 Municipal Bureau of Statistics count showed that Nanjing Metro carried a total of 720 million rides that year. The idea for a metro system in Nanjing was first proposed in 1984 in the Nanjing Municipal People's Congress as a way to ease traffic concerns. In 1999, following the successful completion of the station's experimental phase, Nanjing became the fifth city after Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen to receive approval from the National Development and Reform Commission to begin work on a subway. Roughly one year later in December, construction on the initial 21.7 km (13.5 mi) line of the system broke ground. The system currently spans 257 km (160 mi) and its 128 stations are divided between urban lines and S-train lines. (Full list...)

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Today's featured picture

Las Meninas is a 1656 painting in the Museo del Prado in Madrid, by Diego Velázquez, the leading artist of the Spanish Golden Age. It shows a large room in the Royal Alcázar of Madrid during the reign of King Philip IV of Spain, and presents several figures, including the young Infanta Margaret Theresa surrounded by her entourage. Las Meninas has been recognised as one of the most important paintings in Western art history, and its complex and enigmatic composition has frequently been the subject of analysis. It has been described as "Velázquez's supreme achievement, a highly self-conscious, calculated demonstration of what painting could achieve, and perhaps the most searching comment ever made on the possibilities of the easel painting".

Painting: Diego Velázquez

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