Wikipedia:Main Page history/2020 July 28

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From today's featured article

Elasmosaurus was a large marine reptile in the order Plesiosauria. The genus lived about 80.5 million years ago, during the Late Cretaceous. The first specimen was sent to the American paleontologist Edward Drinker Cope after its discovery in 1867 near Fort Wallace, Kansas. Only one incomplete skeleton is definitely known, consisting of a fragmentary skull, the spine, and the pectoral and pelvic girdles, and a single species, E. platyurus, is recognized today. Measuring 10.3 meters (34 ft) long, the genus had a streamlined body with paddle-like limbs or flippers, a short tail, and a small, slender, triangular head. With a neck around 7.1 meters (23 ft) long, Elasmosaurus was one of the longest-necked animals to have lived, with the largest number of neck vertebrae known, 72. It probably ate small fish and marine invertebrates, seizing them with long teeth. Elasmosaurus is known from the Pierre Shale formation, which represents marine deposits from the Western Interior Seaway. (Full article...)

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In the news

COVID-19 pandemic

A series of attacks over disputed farmland in Darfur, Sudan, leaves more than eighty people dead and several villages destroyed.
A security breach in the administration system of Twitter results in many prominent accounts promoting a bitcoin scam.
At least sixteen people are killed in border clashes between Armenian and Azerbaijani armed forces.
Comet NEOWISE is visible to the naked eye in the Northern Hemisphere.

On this day

July 28

Sutton Hoo helmet

1821 – Peruvian War of Independence: Argentine general José de San Martín declared the independence of Peru from the Spanish Empire.
1939 – During the excavation of a 7th-century ship burial at Sutton Hoo in Suffolk, England, archaeologists discovered a helmet (pictured) that probably belonged to King Rædwald of East Anglia.
1945 – A B-25 bomber crashed into the Empire State Building in New York City, killing 14 people and causing an estimated $1 million in damage.
1995 – Two followers of Rajneesh were convicted of conspiring to assassinate Charles Turner, the U.S. attorney for the District of Oregon.
2005 – The Provisional Irish Republican Army announced the formal end of its armed campaign to overthrow British rule in Northern Ireland and create a united Ireland.

Marguerite Louise d'Orléans (b. 1645)
George Law Curry (d. 1878)
Dulquer Salmaan (b. 1986)

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Today's featured picture

Cirsium eriophorum, the woolly thistle, is a large herbaceous biennial plant in the daisy family, Asteraceae. It is native to Central and Western Europe, where it grows in grassland and open scrubland. Several parts of the plant are edible; the young leaves can be eaten raw, the young stems can be peeled and boiled, and the flower buds can be consumed in a similar way to artichokes. This picture shows a C. eriophorum flower head photographed in Kozara National Park, in Republika Srpska, Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Photograph credit: Petar Milošević

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