Wikipedia:Main Page history/2018 December 23

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From today's featured article

Yuji Naka

Sonic Adventure is a platform game for Sega's Dreamcast. The first main Sonic the Hedgehog game to feature 3D gameplay, it was produced by Yuji Naka (pictured) and first released on December 23, 1998. The story follows Sonic the Hedgehog, Miles "Tails" Prower, Knuckles the Echidna, Amy Rose, Big the Cat, and E-102 Gamma in their quests to stop Doctor Robotnik from unleashing Chaos, a water-like being. Controlling one of the six characters, players explore a series of themed levels. Sonic Team began work on Sonic Adventure in 1997. A 60-member development team created the game in ten months, drawing inspiration from locations in Peru and Guatemala. The game received critical acclaim for its visuals and gameplay. With 2.5 million copies sold by August 2006, it became the Dreamcast's bestseller. It is recognized as an important release in both the Sonic series and the platform genre. Sonic Adventure was ported to other consoles, and in 2001 it was followed by Sonic Adventure 2. (Full article...)

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Did you know...

Herrmann's sea cucumber

... that historically, curryfish (example pictured) was not commercially harvested because it disintegrated too easily when handled?
... that Ottoman parliament member Shukri al-Asali galvanized Syrian-Arab opposition to the empire’s Turkish-centric policies and was in 1916 executed by the government?
... that one-game playoffs for the National League West and National League Central in 2018 marked the first time that Major League Baseball had two tie-breaker games in the same season?
... that computational biologist Bette Korber describes her development of a mosaic antigen vaccine against HIV as creating "little Frankenstein proteins"?
... that the films Tribulation 99: Alien Anomalies Under America, Spectres of the Spectrum, and Mock Up on Mu were created using found footage from the collection of Craig Baldwin?
... that Joe Nguyen and My-Linh Thai were the first two Vietnamese American legislators to be elected to the Washington State Legislature?
... that German police have been investigating reports of their country's soldiers plotting the assassination of several left-leaning politicians?
... that astronaut Buzz Aldrin created a rap single with Snoop Dogg to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Moon landing?

In the news

The Balangiga bells

In field hockey, the World Cup concludes with Belgium defeating the Netherlands in the final.
The Balangiga bells (pictured), taken by US Army soldiers from the Philippines in 1901 as war trophies, are repatriated.
Nine people are killed when a high-speed train collides with a locomotive in Ankara, Turkey.
Two days after a shooting at the Christmas market in Strasbourg, France, in which five people died, French police kill the suspected perpetrator.

On this day

December 23: Night of the Radishes in Oaxaca City, Mexico; The Emperor's Birthday in Japan; Festivus

Coelacanth (preserved specimen)

1793 – French Revolution: The Royalist counterrevolutionary army was decisively defeated in the Battle of Savenay, although fighting continued in the War in the Vendée for years afterward.
1876 – The Constantinople Conference opened, which resulted in political reforms in Bosnia and the Ottoman territories with a majority Bulgarian population.
1938 – The first living specimen of a coelacanth (example pictured), long believed to be extinct, was discovered in a South African fisherman's catch.
1958 – The Tokyo Tower, then the world's tallest freestanding structure at 332.5 metres (1,091 ft), opened.
2008 – The Guinean military engineered a coup d'état, and announced that it planned to rule the country for two years prior to a new presidential election.

Carl Gustaf Wrangel (b. 1613) · Augustus Hervey, 3rd Earl of Bristol (d. 1779) · Quentin Bryce (b. 1942)

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Today's featured picture

The Battle of Malvern Hill was fought on July 1, 1862, between the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia and the Union Army of the Potomac. It was the final battle of the Seven Days Battles during the American Civil War, taking place on Malvern Hill near the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia. Including inactive reserves, more than fifty thousand soldiers from each side took part, using more than two hundred pieces of artillery and three warships. The battle resulted in a tactical victory for the Union side, but the Confederates claimed a strategic victory as the Union failed to go on to capture Richmond.

This is a map of the night's march undertaken by the Union forces after the battle.

Map: Private Robert K. Sneden, mapmaker for Samuel P. Heintzelman's III Corps

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