Wikipedia:Main Page history/2017 March 13

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From today's featured article

God of War II is a third person action-adventure video game first released on March 13, 2007, and was the last major release for the PlayStation 2. The player controls Kratos, a Spartan warrior who became the new God of War after killing the former, Ares. Kratos is betrayed by Zeus, the King of the Olympian Gods, who strips him of his godhood and kills him. On his way to the Underworld, Kratos is saved by Gaia, who instructs him to find the Sisters of Fate. Acquiring their power, he travels back in time to avert his betrayal and take revenge on Zeus, who is revealed to be his father. The gameplay focuses on combo-based combat and features quick time events that require the player to complete game controller actions in a timed sequence to defeat stronger enemies and bosses. The game also features magical attacks, puzzles, and platforming elements. The fourteenth best-selling PlayStation 2 game of all time, it sold more than 4.24 million copies worldwide. Regarded as one of the best action-adventure games for the platform and noted for its graphics and gameplay, it received several awards, including PlayStation Game of the Year. (Full article...)

Part of the God of War franchise series, one of Wikipedia's featured topics.

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Did you know...

Manet's portrait of Émilie Ambre as Carmen

... that the soprano Émilie Ambre was portrayed by artist Édouard Manet in the title role of Bizet's Carmen (pictured)?
... that the family of Yue Yi-chin, a Chinese flying ace of the Second Sino-Japanese War, claim to be descended from the Song dynasty general and folk hero Yue Fei?
... that the top-three finishers in the 2010 Pepsi Max 400 all drove Chevrolets?
... that Therese Benedek submitted to a five-month training analysis under an associate of Freud before embarking on her own career in psychoanalysis?
... that the Church of Scientology used espionage, front groups, private detectives, and over 2,500 lawsuits to gain tax exemption in the United States?
... that Euclidean space can be completely filled without overlaps by copies of any plesiohedron, a type of convex shape whose known examples have up to 38 sides?
... that Richard Nixon and his longtime valet, Manuel "Manolo" Sanchez, sometimes communicated using "words that only the two of them understood"?
... that according to local lore, Texarkana's Ace of Clubs House was built with US$10,000 won in a game of poker with an ace of clubs?

In the news

Park Geun-hye

South Korea's Constitutional Court removes President Park Geun-hye (pictured) from office.
Donald Tusk is re-elected as President of the European Council despite opposition from his home country, Poland.
An attack on a hospital in Kabul, Afghanistan, kills 49 people and injures more than 60 others.
The Azure Window, a limestone natural arch on the Maltese island of Gozo, collapses during a storm.
WikiLeaks begins releasing Vault 7, a series of documents detailing activities of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency to perform electronic surveillance and cyberwarfare.

On this day...

March 13: Holi (Hinduism, 2017)

Pope Francis

1697 – Nojpetén, capital of the Itza Maya kingdom, fell to Spanish conquistadors, the final step in the Spanish conquest of Guatemala.
1845 – German composer Felix Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto, one of the most popular violin concertos of all time, was first played in Leipzig.
1954 – Viet Minh forces under Võ Nguyên Giáp opened fire with a massive artillery barrage on the French military to begin the Battle of Dien Bien Phu, the climactic battle in the First Indochina War.
1996 – A gunman killed sixteen children and a teacher at a primary school in Dunblane, Scotland, before committing suicide.
2013 – Francis (pictured) was elected pope, making him the first Jesuit pope, the first from the Americas and the first from the Southern Hemisphere, as well as the first non-European pope in over 1,000 years.

Mustafa Reşid Pasha (b. 1800) · Adolf Anderssen (d. 1879) · Odette Hallowes (d. 1995)

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From today's featured list

Blue-and-yellow macaw (Ara ararauna) in flight

There are 402 species of parrots, birds that collectively make up the order Psittaciformes. The order is subdivided into three superfamilies: the Psittacoidea ("true" parrots), the Cacatuoidea (cockatoos), and the Strigopoidea (New Zealand parrots). Parrots have a generally pantropical distribution, with several species inhabiting temperate regions in the Southern Hemisphere as well. The greatest diversity of parrots is in South America and Australasia. Of the known parrot species, 387 are extant; the remaining extinct species all went extinct after 1500 C.E. and are thus considered to be recently extinct by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. (Full list...)

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Today's featured picture

Self-portrait as David with the head of Goliath, a c. 1756 self-portrait by the German artist Johan Zoffany (1733–1810). Born in Frankfurt, Zoffany trained in Italy under Agostino Masucci but found success mostly in England. Early in his career he painted portraits of the royal family, as well as leading actors and members of high society. He later made huge paintings with large casts of people and works of art, such as Tribuna of the Uffizi.

Painting: Johan Zoffany

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