Wikipedia:Main Page history/2016 September 15

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From today's featured article

A No. 38 Squadron Caribou

No. 38 Squadron is a Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) transport unit. Formed in 1943, the squadron ferried supplies and personnel during World War II between Australia and combat zones in New Guinea and Borneo, using Douglas Dakota aircraft. It was deployed to Singapore from 1950 to 1952, supplying Commonwealth forces engaged in the Malayan Emergency. It started flying de Havilland Canada DHC-4 Caribous (pictured) in 1964. Throughout Australia's involvement in the Vietnam War, the squadron prepared aircrew for operational service with No. 35 Squadron, and maintained a detachment in Papua and New Guinea to provide pilots with experience flying in tropical conditions. During the 1980s it provided search and rescue capabilities within Australia, working with Australian Army units. From 1999 until 2001, a detachment was deployed to East Timor as part of the Australian-led peacekeeping force in the newly independent nation. The squadron continued to fly the ageing Caribous until 2009, when it was re-equipped with eight Beechcraft King Air 350 aircraft. Currently stationed at RAAF Base Townsville, Queensland, it is responsible for light transport tasks and for training RAAF pilots to operate King Airs. (Full article...)

Part of the No. 90 (Composite) Wing RAAF series, one of Wikipedia's featured topics.

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Did you know...

Daieishō

... that Daieishō (pictured) would rather push and thrust than grip the belt?
... that when accepted by the National Trust in 1982, the Kingston Lacy estate was the largest bequest they had ever received?
... that T. J. Friedl's signing bonus from the Cincinnati Reds is the largest ever for a player not taken in the MLB draft?
... that the music video for DJ Shadow's "Nobody Speak", featuring Run the Jewels, has been described as "brutal" and "politically charged"?
... that while the Turkish female wheelchair shooters Ayşegül Pehlivanlar and Çağla Baş compete for the first time at the Paralympics, Aysel Özgan takes part for the third time?
... that Seagate Technology faced a class action over the failure rates of its ST3000DM001 3TB hard disk drives?
... that a local newspaper criticized the PRI's nomination of Marco Antonio García Ayala to represent Baja California, saying he "doesn't even belong to this state"?
... that this month, a researcher from WWT Slimbridge plans to become a "human swan"?

In the news

Artist's impression of OSIRIS-REx

The Chess Olympiad concludes with the United States winning the open event and China the women's event.
The wreck of HMS Terror, belonging to Franklin's lost expedition, is found off the south-west coast of King William Island, in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago.
Passenger services begin on the 54-kilometre (34 mi) Moscow Central Circle rail line.
North Korea conducts its fifth and largest nuclear test to date.
NASA launches OSIRIS-REx (artist's impression pictured), a probe sent to return samples from the asteroid 101955 Bennu.
Genetic analysis shows that the giraffe genus, previously thought to contain one extant species, actually consists of four.

On this day...

September 15: International Day of Democracy; Mid-Autumn Festival (Chinese calendar, 2016); Independence Day in Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua (1821); Battle of Britain Day in the United Kingdom; Free Money Day

British Mark I tank

1816 – HMS Whiting became wrecked on the Doom Bar, a treacherous shoal off the coast of Cornwall, England, that has caused over 600 known shipwrecks.
1862 – American Civil War: Confederate forces captured the Union garrison at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, taking more than 12,000 prisoners.
1916 – Tanks (pictured), the "secret weapons" of the British Army during the First World War, were first used in combat at the Battle of the Somme in Somme, Picardy, France.
1935 – Nazi Germany enacted the Nuremberg Laws, which deprived German Jews of citizenship, and adopted a new national flag emblazoned with a swastika.
1963 – A bomb planted by members of the Ku Klux Klan exploded in the 16th Street Baptist Church, an African American Baptist church in Birmingham, Alabama, killing four children and injuring at least 22 others.

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Today's featured picture

Flaming June is a painting by Sir Frederic Leighton created in 1895. Painted with oil paints on a 47-by-47-inch (1,200 mm × 1,200 mm) square canvas, it is considered to be Leighton's magnum opus, showing his classicist nature. It has been interpreted as alluding to the figures of sleeping nymphs and naiads, with the toxic oleander branch in the top right symbolizing the fragile link between sleep and death. The painting is held by the Museo de Arte de Ponce in Ponce, Puerto Rico.

Painting: Frederic Leighton

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