Wikipedia:Main Page history/2021 August 9b

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From today's featured article

The 2008 UAW-Dodge 400 was the third stock car race of the 2008 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series. It was held on March 2 before a crowd of 153,000 in Las Vegas, Nevada, at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. The 267-lap race was won by Carl Edwards of the Roush Fenway Racing team, for his ninth career win in the series. Dale Earnhardt Jr. finished second and Edwards's teammate Greg Biffle came in third. The race was stopped when Jeff Gordon crashed on lap 262, strewing car parts into the path of other drivers; after the restart, Edwards maintained the lead. There were eleven cautions and 19 lead changes by nine different drivers during the race. Ford took over the lead of the Manufacturers' Championship, five points ahead of Dodge. The race attracted 12.1 million television viewers. Edwards was later issued with a 100-point penalty after his car was found to violate NASCAR regulations, dropping him from first to seventh in the Drivers' Championship. (Full article...)

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Did you know ...

CBS Building

... that Black Rock (pictured) is mostly concrete?
... that after the Lord's Day Observance Society forced the National Sunday League to stop their Sunday lectures, they eventually regrouped to form the Sunday Lecture Society?
... that a Chinese ex-slave named Quintín Quintana became a successful merchant and pro-Chile leader in the War of the Pacific?
... that a large amount of energy in Turkey is underground and under the Black Sea?
... that former American Boy Scout Joe Carroll was expelled from seminary before completing his education and being ordained?
... that the African Society of Human Genetics was established so that more human genetics and genomics research could be done by African scientists in Africa?
... that the St Helena Local Militia led the 1840 procession of Napoleon's body after its disinterment from his tomb on the island?
... that the McDonald's promotion campaign for the 1984 Olympic Games was given an unexpected boost by the Cold War?

In the news

Krystsina Tsimanouskaya

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change releases the first part of its Sixth Assessment Report on the state of knowledge of climate change and its effects.
Belarusian sprinter Krystsina Tsimanouskaya (pictured) travels to Poland on a humanitarian visa after attempts by the Belarus Olympic Committee to repatriate her against her will.
In Olympic athletics, Venezuelan Yulimar Rojas breaks a 26-year-old world record in the women's triple jump, and world records are set in men's and women's 400 metres hurdles by Norwegian Karsten Warholm and American Sydney McLaughlin.

On this day

August 9: International Day of the World's Indigenous Peoples; National Women's Day in South Africa (1956)

Replica of the original Fat Man atomic bomb

1877 – Nez Perce War: Both the Nez Perce and the United States Army suffered numerous casualties at the Battle of the Big Hole, which ended inconclusively.
1945 – World War II: The USAAF bomber Bockscar dropped a Fat Man atomic bomb (replica pictured) on Nagasaki, Japan.
1971 – The Troubles: British forces began arresting and interning suspected Irish republican militants in Northern Ireland.
2001 – A suicide bomber attacked a pizza restaurant in Jerusalem, killing 15 people and wounding 130 others.

Stephen of Anjou (d. 1354)
Roman Dmowski (b. 1864)
John Key (b. 1961)

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From today's featured list

Mahesh Babu

The filmography of Mahesh Babu, an Indian actor known for his work in Telugu cinema, includes 39 films between 1979 and 2020. He first appeared in the 1979 film Needa when he was four years old, and continued to perform as a child actor in several films, most of which featured his father Krishna. After starring as the hero in Balachandrudu (1990) while still a child, Babu put his career on hold to concentrate on his education until taking on his first lead role as an adult in the 1999 film Raja Kumarudu, for which he won the Nandi Award for Best Male Debut. Afterwards, his career stagnated until successes like Murari (2001), Okkadu (2003) and Athadu (2005) brought him fame. In 2006, he played a gangster in the Puri Jagannadh–directed action-thriller Pokiri. The film became the highest-grossing Telugu film of all time and cemented Babu's reputation as a "superstar". In the wake of the failures of Sainikudu (2006) and Athidhi (2007), Babu took a long-term break from cinema for personal reasons. (Full list...)

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Today's featured picture

The sapphire-throated hummingbird (Chrysuronia coeruleogularis) is a shiny, metallic-green hummingbird found in Panama, Colombia, and Costa Rica. During flight, hummingbirds have one of the highest metabolic rates among small birds and therefore need to eat more than their own weight of nectar each day to avoid starvation; insects and spiders are also consumed for added protein. Males are polygamous, and after mating play no part in nest-building or rearing the young. This male sapphire-throated hummingbird was photographed in the gardens of Biomuseo, a natural-history museum in Panama City designed by Frank Gehry.

Photograph credit: Charles James Sharp

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