Wikipedia:Main Page history/2020 April 9

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From today's featured article

Diagram of stone locations at
Fir Clump Stone Circle

Fir Clump Stone Circle was an ancient monument in Burderop Wood near Wroughton, Wiltshire, in South West England. It was one of at least seven stone circles known to have been built in northern Wiltshire south of Swindon, but none of them remain. The ring was part of a tradition of stone circle construction that spread throughout much of Britain, Ireland and Brittany during the Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age, between 3300 and 900 BCE. The purpose of such monuments is unknown, although archaeologists speculate that the stones represented supernatural entities. Around the 1860s, the megaliths in Fir Clump Stone Circle were levelled, but some of them were rediscovered in 1965 by the archaeologist Richard Reiss, who described and measured the monument. In 1969, these stones were removed during construction of the M4 motorway. (Full article...)

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Did you know ...

Formica fusca ants tending mealybugs

... that some ants herd scale insects (example pictured)?
... that according to biographer Steven Fenberg, Jesse H. Jones was the second most powerful person in America during the Great Depression and World War II?
... that SS Petriana was wrecked 200 metres (660 ft) off the Australian coast, but its crew were not allowed to land in Australia?
... that Leonard Montefiore organised an airlift of hundreds of Jewish orphans who had survived Nazi concentration camps?
... that according to legend, the so-called Immortal Piano was partially built with wood from the pillars of Solomon's Temple?
... that Richard J. Daley suffered his only electoral defeat when he ran for sheriff of Cook County, Illinois, in 1946?
... that the National Union of Freedom Fighters in Trinidad and Tobago was the only group to sustain a guerrilla insurgency in the modern English-speaking Caribbean over an extended period of time?
... that aspects of Star Wars character Fennec Shand's personality, costume, and hairstyle were inspired by the fennec fox?

In the news

Coronavirus pandemic

George Pell

The High Court of Australia quashes the conviction of Cardinal George Pell (pictured) for child sex abuse and orders his acquittal.
Cyclone Harold impacts the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Fiji and Tonga, killing at least 27 people.
Vincent van Gogh's painting The Parsonage Garden at Nuenen is stolen from the Singer Laren museum in the Netherlands.

On this day

April 9: Paschal Triduum begins (Western Christianity, 2020); first day of Passover (Judaism, 2020); Vimy Ridge Day in Canada (1917); Day of National Unity in Georgia (1989)

Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr

1860 – Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville recorded himself singing "Au clair de la lune" on his phonautograph, producing the oldest known recording of an audible human voice.
1940 – During the German invasion of Norway, Vidkun Quisling attempted to seize power in the first coup to be broadcast over radio.
1945 – The German heavy cruiser Admiral Scheer, the most successful capital-ship surface raider of the Second World War, was sunk by British bombers.
1980 – Iraqi philosopher Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr (pictured) and his sister Amina were executed by the regime of Saddam Hussein.
2005 – Charles, Prince of Wales, married Camilla Parker Bowles in a civil ceremony at the Windsor Guildhall.

Pope Benedict VIII (d. 1024)
Henrik Rysensteen (b. 1624)
Jackie Evancho (b. 2000)

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Today's featured picture

Thysanozoon nigropapillosum, the yellow-spotted flatworm, is a species of marine flatworm in the family Pseudocerotidae. The species is native to the tropical Indo-Pacific region, where it lives in shallow reef habitats. Flatworms are hermaphrodites, each being able to act as either male or female. As a donor of sperm, it can grip the margin of the recipient's body, using its two penises in a chopstick-like manner, and deposit sperm on the surface of the skin of the recipient, even while it is actively swimming.

This picture shows a T. nigropapillosum photographed in Manta Ray Bay, on the island of Yap in the Federated States of Micronesia. The flatworm is seen swimming to the right at a depth of 12 metres (40 ft) by undulating the margins of its body. The pseudotentacles at the front have simple eyes and sensory receptors to enable the flatworm to find tunicates on which it feeds.

Photograph credit: Betty Wills

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