Wikipedia:Main Page history/2018 December 11

From today's featured article

Benjamin Tillman (1847–1918) was the Democratic Governor of South Carolina from 1890 to 1894 and a United States Senator from 1895 until his death in 1918. A white supremacist who opposed civil rights for blacks, Tillman led a paramilitary group of Red Shirts during South Carolina's violent 1876 election. One of his legacies was South Carolina's 1895 constitution, which disenfranchised most of the black majority and ensured white rule for more than half a century. On the floor of the U.S. Senate, he frequently ridiculed blacks, and boasted of having helped to kill them during the 1876 campaign. He was known as "Pitchfork Ben" after he threatened to use a pitchfork to prod that "bag of beef", President Grover Cleveland. He was the primary sponsor of the Tillman Act (1907), the first federal campaign finance reform law, which banned corporate contributions in federal political campaigns. (Full article...)

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Leonardo Ponzio

In South American association football, the Copa Libertadores concludes with River Plate (captain Leonardo Ponzio pictured) defeating Boca Juniors in the finals.
The sample-return spacecraft OSIRIS-REx arrives at the asteroid 101955 Bennu.
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Lunar Roving Vehicle, driven by Eugene Cernan

1789 – The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, one of the oldest public universities in the United States and the only one to award degrees in the 18th century, received its charter.
1899 – Second Boer War: In the Battle of Magersfontein, Boers defeated the forces of the British Empire trying to relieve the Siege of Kimberley.
1972 – Apollo 17 (Lunar Roving Vehicle pictured), the last Apollo mission, landed on the Moon.
1981 – Salvadoran Civil War: About 900 civilians were killed by the Salvadoran armed forces in an anti-guerrilla campaign.
2008 – American stockbroker Bernard Madoff was arrested and charged with securities fraud in a $64.8 billion Ponzi scheme, the largest in history.

Averroes (d. 1198) · Subramania Bharati (b. 1882) · Big Mama Thornton (b. 1926)

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The Ringling Brothers Circus was founded in the American city of Baraboo, Wisconsin, in 1884 by five of the seven Ringling brothers. In 1907 the brothers acquired the Barnum & Bailey Circus, merging it with their original circus in 1919 to form the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, promoted as The Greatest Show on Earth and operated until 2017.

This is a poster for the circus produced around 1899 by the Courier Lithographic Company of Buffalo, New York.

Poster: Courier Lithographic Company; Restoration: Trialsanderrors and Adam Cuerden

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