Wikipedia:Main Page history/2018 February 4

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From today's featured article

Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome, the site of the game

The Metrodome

The 1998 NFC Championship Game was a National Football League game played on January 17, 1999, to determine the National Football Conference (NFC) champion for the 1998 NFL season. The visiting Atlanta Falcons defeated the heavily favored Minnesota Vikings 30–27 in sudden death overtime to win their first conference championship and advance to the franchise's first Super Bowl appearance. The Vikings had gone undefeated in their home stadium, the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome (pictured), during the regular season, and their placekicker, Gary Anderson, had become the first kicker in NFL history to convert every field goal and extra point attempt in a season. At a critical moment late in the game, Anderson missed a field goal that would have given the Vikings a nearly insurmountable 10-point lead. Instead, the Falcons scored a touchdown to tie the game on their ensuing drive, and in overtime they won by a field goal. The Vikings became the first team with an NFL regular season record of 15–1 that did not go on to win the Super Bowl. (Full article...)

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Did you know...

Skydart

... that the Skydart target rocket (pictured) used the same launching rails as the missiles used to shoot it down?
... that Donna Kennedy became the world's most-capped women's rugby player in 2004, and by 2007 was also the most-capped player in Scotland, retiring in 2010 with 115 caps?
... that before one pharaoh could construct his own monument, the Pyramid of Nyuserre, he had to complete the three monuments to his mother, father, and elder brother?
... that the upcoming film Paul, Apostle of Christ features Jim Caviezel's first appearance in a biblical film since he portrayed Jesus in The Passion of the Christ?
... that the African weaver ant has been used to control the coconut bug?
... that in one 1858 baseball game, Frank Pidgeon threw more than 400 pitches?
... that a BBC executive boasts that actors of the Corporation's Radio Drama Company can be "mice, ants, naiads or dryads, men morphing into hares, maggots in a fisherman's sack, or even a tray of fancy cakes"?
... that the first time Ethel Page met her husband – a future Australian prime minister – he accidentally set her on fire?

In the news

Lunar eclipse of 31 January

A total lunar eclipse (pictured) occurs, close to perigee and also the second full moon in a month, a coincidence of events not seen for 35 years.
In Yemen, separatists from the Southern Transitional Council seize government buildings in Aden from President Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi's forces.
Miloš Zeman is re-elected for a second term in the Czech presidential election.
A bombing in Kabul, Afghanistan, kills at least 103 people and injures more than 200 others.
In Miryang, South Korea, a hospital fire kills 37 people and injures more than 130 others.

On this day...

February 4: Independence Day in Sri Lanka (1948)

Emperor Taizu of Song

960 – Emperor Taizu (pictured) began his reign in China, initiating the Song dynasty that eventually lasted for more than three centuries.
1899 – The Philippine–American War opened when an American soldier, under orders to keep insurgents away from his unit's encampment, fired upon a Filipino soldier in Manila.
1945 – World War II: U.S. Army forces liberated the Santo Tomas Internment Camp in Manila, the largest of the Japanese internment camps in the Philippines.
1998 – A magnitude 5.9 M_W earthquake struck northern Afghanistan, triggering landslides that killed over 2,300 people and destroyed around 15,000 homes.
2008 – The London low emission zone, governing what types of vehicles may enter Greater London, came into being.

Ceolnoth (d. 870) · Carl Michael Bellman (b. 1740) · Jenny Shipley (b. 1952)

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Today's featured picture

A sneeze is a convulsive expulsion of air from the lungs through the nose and mouth, usually caused by foreign particles irritating the nasal mucosa. Sneezing expels air forcibly from the mouth and nose in an explosive, spasmodic involuntary action resulting chiefly from irritation of the nasal mucous membrane. It may be linked to sudden exposure to bright light, sudden change in temperature, a particularly full stomach, or viral infection, and can lead to the spread of disease.

Photograph: James Gathany/Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

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