Wikipedia:Main Page history/2016 February 23

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From today's featured article

The military career of John McCain included attack aircraft missions as a naval aviator in the Vietnam War followed by internment for more than five years as a prisoner of war. His father and grandfather were admirals in the United States Navy. Born in 1936 in the Panama Canal Zone, McCain graduated in 1958 from the U.S. Naval Academy, where his rebellious attitude resulted in a low standing. Off the coast of Vietnam, he narrowly escaped death in the 1967 Forrestal fire. On a bombing mission in October 1967, he was shot down over Hanoi and badly injured in the crash before enduring periods of torture as a prisoner of war. In 1968, he refused a North Vietnamese offer of early release, because it would have meant leaving before other prisoners who had been held longer. He was released in 1973 after the Paris Peace Accords. Upon his return, McCain studied at the National War College and commanded a large training squadron in Florida. In 1979 he was promoted to captain and became the director of the navy's Senate Liaison Office. McCain has been a U.S. Senator from Arizona since 1987, and was the Republican nominee in the 2008 presidential election. (Full article...)

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Did you know...

An electrum Carthaginian shekel

... that Carthaginian currency (pictured) commonly featured the goddess Tanit and a horse?
... that Crucian Ruby M. Rouss served in the Women's Army Corps before becoming the "first black woman to head a Legislature in the United States"?
... that Rare celebrated its 30th anniversary by releasing Rare Replay, a title compiling 30 video games which it created?
... that Ruhollah Khomeini, in his letter to Gorbachev, invited him to monotheism and Islam and also predicted the dissolution of the Soviet Bloc?
... that during filming of the Vietnam War documentary Introduction to the Enemy, a landmine killed a man near Jane Fonda, whose reaction to the death was kept in the film?
... that Ravindra Jadeja is the only batsman to score three triple centuries in the Ranji Trophy?
... that Sivion's stage name is a misspelling of his old one, "Vision"?

In the news

Cyclone Winston on February 20

Cyclone Winston (satellite image pictured), the strongest tropical cyclone on record to strike Fiji, kills at least twenty people.
Yoweri Museveni claims a fifth term as President of Uganda, in an election some international observers have criticised as flawed.
A bombing in Ankara, Turkey, kills at least twenty-eight people and injures more than sixty others.
The Revenant wins five awards, including Best Film and Best Director, at the British Academy Film Awards.

Ongoing events:
- Zika virus outbreak
- European migrant crisis
Recent deaths:

On this day...

February 23: National Day in Brunei (1984); Defender of the Fatherland Day in Russia and several other former Soviet republics; Purim Katan in Judaism (2016)

Supernova SN1987A

1885 – Sino-French War: France gained an important victory in the Battle of Đồng Đăng in the Tonkin region of what is now Vietnam.
1927 – German theoretical physicist Werner Heisenberg wrote a letter to fellow physicist Wolfgang Pauli in which he described his uncertainty principle for the first time.
1941 – Plutonium was first chemically identified by chemist Glenn T. Seaborg and his team at the University of California, Berkeley.
1987 – Light from the supernova SN 1987A (remnant pictured) in the Large Magellanic Cloud reached the Earth.
2007 – A Virgin Trains Pendolino express train from London Euston to Glasgow Central derailed near Grayrigg, Cumbria, UK, killing one person and injuring 22.

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Today's featured picture

Aries and Musca Borealis as depicted in Urania's Mirror, a set of constellation cards published in London c. 1825. Aries, one of the constellations of the zodiac, is located in the northern celestial hemisphere between Pisces and Taurus. Its name is Latin for ram, an animal it has represented since late Babylonian times. Aries is one of the 48 constellations described by the 2nd century astronomer Ptolemy; it remains one of the 88 modern constellations, while Musca Borealis does not.

Illustration: Sidney Hall; restoration: Adam Cuerden

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