Wikipedia:Main Page history/2018 October 13

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From today's featured article

Amazing Stories is an American science fiction magazine first launched in April 1926 by Hugo Gernsback's Experimenter Publishing, and continuing since 2012 as an online magazine. As the first magazine that ran only science fiction stories, it helped define a new genre of pulp fiction, and science fiction fandom traces its beginnings to the letters-to-the-editor columns in Amazing and its competitors. Gernsback's initial editorial approach was to blend instruction with entertainment; he believed science fiction could educate readers, but his audience rapidly showed a preference for implausible adventures. The magazine was published, with some interruptions, for almost eighty years, going through a half-dozen owners and many editors, including Raymond A. Palmer, as it struggled to be profitable. Amazing was nominated for the Hugo Award three times in the 1970s during Ted White's tenure as editor. Several owners attempted to create a modern incarnation of the magazine, but the print publication was suspended after the March 2005 issue. (Full article...)

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Did you know...

Cinder cones in the Cima volcanic field

... that humans carved petroglyphs into the cooled lava flows of the Cima volcanic field (pictured)?
... that today is No Bra Day, on which women are encouraged to go braless to promote breast cancer awareness and gender equality?
... that footballer Sandy Allan was the first player to score a headed hat-trick in a European club competition?
... that in his Berceuse, Chopin created a lullaby for piano in 16 continuous variations on an ostinato ground bass?
... that Giovanni Fornasini, an Italian priest murdered by the Nazis in 1944, was posthumously awarded Italy's Gold Medal of Military Valour and is a candidate for sainthood?
... that the spot-winged glider is a migratory dragonfly?
... that after his ban on playing League of Legends was lifted, Loltyler1's return set a new record for viewership on Twitch.tv?
... that the leader of the Caiazzo massacre on 13 October 1943 eluded arrest for nearly 50 years because authorities were searching for him under the wrong name?

In the news

Soyuz MS-10 launch

Both crew members survive an emergency landing when Soyuz MS-10 suffers a booster failure shortly after launch (pictured) from Baikonur, Kazakhstan.
Hurricane Michael makes landfall in Florida, United States, as a Category 4 storm, killing 11 people after causing at least 15 deaths in Central America.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change releases a report on actions urgently needed to confine global warming to 1.5 °C (2.7 °F).

On this day

October 13

Whirlpool Galaxy

645 – Goguryeo–Tang War: The Tang army, personally led by Emperor Taizong, was forced to abandon a siege of Ansi Fortress.
1773 – French astronomer Charles Messier discovered the Whirlpool Galaxy (pictured), an interacting, grand design spiral galaxy located at a distance of approximately 15–35 million light-years in the constellation Canes Venatici.
1911 – Prince Arthur, a son of Queen Victoria, became the first Governor General of Canada of royal descent, as well as the first Prince of Great Britain and Ireland to hold that position.
1921 – The Soviet republics of Russia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia signed the Treaty of Kars with the Grand National Assembly of Turkey to establish the contemporary borders between Turkey and the South Caucasus states.
1972 – Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 crashed into a remote area in the Andes mountains near the border of Chile and Argentina; the remaining 16 survivors were not rescued until December 23.

Mariotto Albertinelli (b. 1474) · Isaac Brock (d. 1812) · Antonio Berni (d. 1981)

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Today's featured picture

The yellow-billed shrike (Corvinella corvina) is a common resident breeding bird in tropical Africa, from Senegal east to Uganda, and locally in westernmost Kenya. It frequents forest and other habitats with trees. Although it generally feeds on insects, this shrike may hunt larger prey such as small frogs and mice.

Photograph: Charles J. Sharp

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