Wikipedia:Main Page history/2018 September 24

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The crew of the US PT boat PT 59 inspects the wreckage of the Japanes submarine I-1

Wreckage of the Japanese submarine I-1

Operation Ke was the largely successful withdrawal of Japanese forces from Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands during World War II. All attempts by the Japanese army to recapture Henderson Field, the only airfield on the island being used by Allied aircraft, had been repulsed with heavy losses. Japanese ground forces had been reduced from 36,000 to 11,000 through starvation, disease, and battle casualties. Attempting to reinforce and resupply the ground forces on the island, Japanese naval forces were also suffering heavy losses of troops and matériel, including a submarine sunk in late January (wreckage pictured). The main withdrawal was carried out on the nights of 1, 4, and 7 February by destroyers. The Japanese evacuated 10,652 men from Guadalcanal, of whom 600 died during the withdrawal. On 9 February, Allied forces realized that the Japanese were gone and declared Guadalcanal secure, ending the six-month campaign for control of the island. (Full article...)

Part of the Guadalcanal Campaign series, one of Wikipedia's featured topics.

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Did you know...

Old Harbor U.S. Life Saving Station

... that the Old Harbor U.S. Life Saving Station (pictured), built in 1897 to rescue shipwrecked mariners, was itself rescued from the sea and given a new lease of life?
... that Arthur Rook and Ian Whimster wrote important articles on keratoacanthoma and blistering skin diseases?
... that during the Quasi-War, the Inspector General of the United States Army, Alexander Hamilton, acted as the de facto head of the United States Army?
... that sociologist Ashley Mears conducted an ethnography of the fashion industry while working as a model in New York and London?
... that the name of Melimoyu, a volcano in Chile, means "four breasts"?
... that Manuel Torres was the first foreign diplomat to die in the United States?
... that the Stratford Dialectical and Radical Club, formed in 1880, was one of the first openly socialist societies in London?
... that the Israeli actor Topol, who won a Golden Globe for his performance as Tevye in the 1971 film Fiddler on the Roof, played the role in shows and revivals about 3,500 times?

In the news

Eliud Kipchoge

An attack at a military parade kills at least 29 people in Ahvaz, Iran.
A Tanzanian ferry capsizes on Lake Victoria, killing at least 224 people.
A landslide, triggered by several days of heavy rainfall, kills at least 42 people in Naga, Philippines.
Kenyan Eliud Kipchoge (pictured) runs the Berlin Marathon in world record time.
NASA's ICESat-2 satellite is launched, the last mission to use the Delta II rocket.

On this day

September 24: Mid-Autumn Festival (Chinese calendar, 2018); First day of Sukkot (Judaism, 2018); Heritage Day in South Africa

Alfred Deakin

1789 – The Judiciary Act of 1789 was signed into law, establishing the U.S. federal judiciary and setting the number of Supreme Court Justices.
1841 – Raja Muda Hashim, uncle of the Sultan of Brunei, granted Sarawak to British adventurer James Brooke.
1903 – Alfred Deakin (pictured) became the second Prime Minister of Australia, succeeding Edmund Barton who left office to become a founding Justice of the High Court of Australia.
1964 – The Warren Commission released its report to the U.S. president, concluding that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in the assassination of John F. Kennedy. The report was made public three days later.
1975 – Dougal Haston and Doug Scott on the Southwest Face expedition became the first people to reach the summit of Mount Everest by ascending one of its faces.

'Adud al-Dawla (b. 936) · Georges Claude (b. 1870) · Bruno Pontecorvo (d. 1993)

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Halifax

Nova Scotia's 50 municipalities cover 99.8% of the territory's land mass, and are home to 98.9% of its population. Nova Scotia is the seventh-most populous province in Canada with 923,598 residents as of the 2016 Census of Population, and the second-smallest province in land area at 52,942 km² (20,441 sq mi). Unlike the provinces of British Columbia, Ontario and Quebec, which have two-tiered municipality systems, Nova Scotia has a one-tier system of municipalities inclusive of four municipality types – regional municipalities, towns, county municipalities and district municipalities. Of its 50 municipalities, Nova Scotia has 3 regional municipalities, 26 towns, 9 county municipalities and 12 district municipalities. Halifax (pictured), the provincial capital, is incorporated as a regional municipality. It is Nova Scotia's largest municipality by population with 403,131 residents as of the 2016 census and largest municipality by land area at 5,490.35 km² (2,119.84 sq mi). (Full list...)

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Steven Chu (born 1948) is an American physicist and former government official. Born in St. Louis into a family with Chinese ancestry, Chu studied at the University of Rochester and then earned a PhD in physics at the University of California, Berkeley. He became a researcher, first at Bell Labs and then later as a professor at Stanford University. In 1997 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics, along with two colleagues, for the "development of methods to cool and trap atoms with laser light". In 2009, Chu was appointed United States Secretary of Energy in the first administration of president Barack Obama, a position he held until 2013.

Photograph: Royal Society uploader

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