Wikipedia:Main Page history/2018 May 14
From today's featured articleThe school that became Texas A&M University, the first public institution of higher education in Texas, was founded in 1871 as the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas. Established under the Morrill Act of 1862, it was originally proposed as a branch of the yet-to-be-created University of Texas, but the Texas legislature never gave that university any authority over Texas A&M. For much of its first century, enrollment was restricted to white men who were willing to participate in the Corps of Cadets and receive military training. Shortly after World War II, the legislature redefined Texas A&M as a university and the flagship school of the Texas A&M University System, cementing the school's status as an institution separate from the University of Texas. In the 1960s, the state legislature renamed the school Texas A&M University, with the "A&M" becoming purely symbolic. Membership in the Corps of Cadets became voluntary, and the school became racially integrated and coeducational. (Full article...)
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On this day...May 14: Feast day of Saint Matthias (Roman Catholicism)
Sambhaji (b. 1657) · Fanny Imlay (b. 1794) · Marjory Stoneman Douglas (d. 1998) |
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There are 57 genera of flowering plants estimated to contain at least 500 described species. The largest of these is currently the legume genus Astragalus (milk-vetches), with over 3,000 species. The sizes of plant genera vary widely from those containing a single species to genera containing thousands of species, and this disparity became clear early in the history of plant classification. The largest genus in Carl Linnaeus' seminal Species Plantarum was Euphorbia, with 56 species; Linnaeus believed that no genus should contain more than 100 species. Part of the disparity in genus sizes is attributable to historical factors. According to a hypothesis published by Max Walters in 1961, the size of plant genera is related to the age, not of the taxon itself, but of the concept of the taxon in the minds of taxonomists. The introduction of infrageneric taxa (such as the subgenus, section and series) in the 19th century by botanists including Augustin Pyrame de Candolle allowed the retention of large genera that would otherwise have become unwieldy. (Full list...)
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Luidia senegalensis is a tropical species of starfish in the family Luidiidae. It has nine long, slim tapering arms attached to a small circular central disc and grows to a diameter of about 30 to 40 centimetres (12 to 16 in). It can be found from the coasts of Florida as far south as southern Brazil, where it favours sandy, muddy or shelly seabeds in sheltered locations such as lagoons. It feeds primarily on molluscs, small crustaceans, and polychaete worms, which it swallows whole by everting its stomach and engulfing its prey. Photograph: Andrea Westmoreland
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