Wikipedia:Main Page history/2018 February 25

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From today's featured article

USS West Bridge (ID-2888) was a cargo ship during World War I, one of the steel-hulled West ships built for the U.S. Shipping Board on the West Coast. Launched in April 1918, the ship joined a convoy of cargo ships headed to France in August. After the convoy was attacked by two German submarines and West Bridge was torpedoed, a salvage crew from the American destroyer Smith and four tugs dispatched from France successfully brought the ship into port. After seven months of repairs, West Bridge resumed Navy service until December 1919. The ship was laid up for nearly seven years from 1922 to 1929, when she was sold to an intercoastal cargo service under the name SS Barbara Cates. By 1938, the ship had been renamed Pan Gulf for service with a subsidiary of the Waterman Steamship Company. During World War II, Pan Gulf made nine round trips across the North Atlantic without incident in convoys. In May 1945, the ship was transferred to the Soviet Union under Lend-Lease. Renamed SS Lermontov, the ship continued in civilian service for the Soviets until 1966. (Full article...)

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Did you know...

Austin United States Courthouse

... that the Austin United States Courthouse (pictured) was given an abundance of windows and natural lighting to represent the importance of transparency in the judiciary?
... that Arsenal reached today's 2018 EFL Cup Final against Manchester City without playing a game outside London?
... that 40 years ago, Gary Mathias disappeared leaving a working automobile, to walk into California's Plumas National Forest without winter clothing or food, along with four men later found dead?
... that Sudden Rush was the first group to record nā mele paleoleo (Hawaiian hip hop)?
... that in 1955, a white supremacist organization claimed the racial integration of schools in the United States was a plot devised in Moscow to "mongrelize" White Americans?
... that pianist Christopher White arranged four movements of Mahler's unfinished Tenth Symphony for his instrument and made a recording at Rosslyn Hill Unitarian Chapel, Hampstead?
... that Wat Phra Dhammakaya contains a large monument with a million Buddha statues?
... that in 1977, hostages on board a hijacked airliner escaped when their captors fell asleep?

In the news

Billy Graham

American evangelical preacher Billy Graham (pictured) dies at the age of 99.
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri wins five awards, including Best Film, at the British Academy Film Awards.
Iran Aseman Airlines Flight 3704 crashes in the Zagros Mountains, killing all 65 people on board.
South African president Jacob Zuma resigns amid corruption claims, and is succeeded by Cyril Ramaphosa.
A gunman kills 17 people and injures 15 others at a school in Parkland, Florida, United States.

On this day...

February 25: Ayyám-i-Há begins (Bahá'í calendar, 2018); Soviet Occupation Day in Georgia (1921); National Day in Kuwait (1961)

Edvard Beneš

1843 – Captain Lord George Paulet of the Royal Navy began a five-month occupation of land in the Hawaiian Islands.
1866 – Miners in Calaveras County, California, discovered a human skull that a prominent geologist claimed was proof (later disproven) that humans had existed during the Pliocene age.
1948 – Fearful of civil war and Soviet intervention in recent unrest, Czechoslovakian president Edvard Beneš (pictured) ceded control over the government to the Communist Party.
1951 – After being postponed since 1943 due to World War II, the first Pan American Games opened in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
1992 – Nagorno-Karabakh War: Armenian armed forces killed at least 161 ethnic Azerbaijani civilians from the town of Khojaly in the Nagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan.

Ibn Battuta (b. 1304) · Andranik (b. 1865) · Elizabeth Gertrude Britton (d. 1934)

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Today's featured picture

A Cassius blue butterfly (Leptotes cassius theonus) in Artemisa, Cuba. It is part of the family Lycaenidae, and is found from the southern United States through the Caribbean, Mexico, Central and South America. Caterpillars of this species are known to feed on such plants as the woolly rattlepod and lima bean.

Photograph: Charles J. Sharp

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