Wikipedia:Main Page history/2021 December 13

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From today's featured article

Original Sega CD (bottom) attached to an original Genesis

The Sega CD is a CD-ROM accessory for the Genesis (also known as Mega Drive), produced by Sega as part of the fourth generation of video game consoles. It was released on December 12, 1991, in Japan, in 1992 in North America, and in 1993 in Europe. It plays CD-based games and adds hardware functionality such as a faster central processing unit and graphic enhancements such as sprite scaling and rotation. It also plays audio CDs and CD+G discs. The main benefit of CD technology was greater storage; CDs offered more than 320 times the space of Genesis cartridges. Sega partnered with JVC to design the Sega CD, which was redesigned several times by Sega and licensed third-party developers. By March 1996, Sega discontinued it to focus on the Sega Saturn; 2.24 million units had been sold. Retrospective reception is mixed, with praise for some games and functions, but criticism for its dearth of deep games, high price and lack of support from Sega. (This article is part of a featured topic: Sega video game consoles.)

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Did you know ...

Tina Stege

... that Tina Stege (pictured), who led the High Ambition Coalition at COP26, is from a country that may cease to exist with projected rises in sea level?
... that the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre was known as the John Golden Theatre before the John Golden Theatre was?
... that pulmonologist Sze-Piao Yang was referred to as the "father of thoracic X-ray interpretation in Taiwan", and conducted the first ever occupational disease study done in Taiwan?
... that the board game Dragomino features "adorable" dragons?
... that violinist Nikolai Sachenko performs rarely-played piano trios by Russian composers as a member of the Brahms Trio?
... that The Undercommons, an essay collection that criticizes academia, was written by two alumni of Harvard University?
... that Jonathan Strong, an early enslaved West Indian in Britain, was abused by his master so badly that he could barely walk or see?
... that a 1963 book offers Marxist and Freudian interpretations of Pooh?

In the news

Max Verstappen

In motor racing, Max Verstappen (pictured) wins the Formula One World Championship, while Mercedes win the constructor's title.
A tornado outbreak kills at least 76 people in Kentucky and at least 13 more in neighboring U.S. states.
Magnus Carlsen defends his World Chess Championship title, defeating Ian Nepomniachtchi.
It Takes Two wins game of the year at The Game Awards.

On this day

December 13:

Wojciech Jaruzelski

1643 – First English Civil War: Roundhead forces under Sir William Waller led a successful surprise attack on a winter garrison of Royalist infantry and cavalry.
1769 – Dartmouth College, in present-day Hanover, New Hampshire, was established by royal charter, becoming the last university to be founded in the Thirteen Colonies before the American Revolution.
1981 – Polish prime minister Wojciech Jaruzelski (pictured) performed a self-coup by declaring martial law, suspending the trade union Solidarity and imprisoning many of its leaders.
2001 – The Parliament of India was attacked by five gunmen, who killed nine people.
2011 – After murdering a woman at his home, a man threw grenades and fired a rifle at crowds in Liège, Belgium, killing 6 people and injuring 125 others, before committing suicide.

Pope Callixtus II (d. 1124)
Emily Carr (b. 1871)
Hans-Joachim Marseille (b. 1919)

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From today's featured list

Sonia Gandhi

The president of the Indian National Congress is the highest command of the Indian National Congress (INC), one of the principal political parties in India. Constitutionally, the president is elected by an electoral college composed of members drawn from the Pradesh Congress Committees and members of the All India Congress Committee. After the party's foundation in December 1885, Womesh Chunder Bonnerjee became its first president. From 1885 to 1933, the presidency had a term of one year only. From 1933 onwards, there was no such fixed term for the president. A total of 61 people have served as the president of the INC since its formation. Sonia Gandhi (pictured) is the longest-serving president of the party, having held the office for more than twenty years, from 1998 to 2017 and since 2019. (Full list...)

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Today's featured picture

Drottningholm Palace is the private residence of the Swedish royal family, located on an island on the outskirts of Stockholm. The gardens and parks surrounding the castle are one of the main attractions for the tourists who visit the palace each year. This photograph shows a view of the Baroque garden through a window of the palace. Along with the rest of the palace grounds, the garden was neglected during the 19th century, but was restored in the 1950s and 1960s on the initiative of King Gustaf VI Adolf.

Photograph credit: Martin Kraft

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