Wikipedia:Main Page history/2021 July 11

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From today's featured article

George Fan, designer

Plants vs. Zombies is a 2009 tower defense video game developed and published by PopCap Games. First released for Windows and Mac OS X, the game has since been ported to consoles, handhelds, and mobile devices. In Plants vs. Zombies, the player takes the role of a homeowner in the midst of a zombie apocalypse. As a horde of zombies approaches along several parallel lanes, the player must defend the home by putting down plants, which fire projectiles at the zombies or otherwise detrimentally affect them. The game was designed by George Fan (pictured) as a sequel to Insaniquarium. Fan took inspiration from the games Magic: The Gathering and Warcraft III and the movie Swiss Family Robinson. The game was positively received by critics and was nominated for multiple awards. It quickly became the best-selling game developed by PopCap Games. Plants vs. Zombies was followed by a series of games after the acquisition of PopCap Games by Electronic Arts. (Full article...)

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Did you know ...

Jews forced to perform calisthenics during the Eleftherias Square roundup

... that 9,000 Greek Jews were targeted by the 1942 Eleftherias Square roundup (pictured), and those who collapsed were attacked by dogs?
... that Ellora Derenoncourt demonstrated that the expansion of minimum wage in 1967 accounted for 20 percent of the reduction in racial income gaps in the United States during the civil rights era?
... that Japanese industrialist Ichizō Kobayashi established the Takarazuka Grand Theater in the city of Takarazuka because it was located at the terminus of a train line owned by his company?
... that Marja Kubašec was both the first Sorbian woman to receive a formal teacher training and the first woman to write a novel in Upper Sorbian?
... that the many refugees who have entered Canada via Roxham Road at the border between New York and Quebec since 2017 may not have been breaking any laws?
... that the volcanic crater Cerro Overo formed about 77,000 years ago?
... that June Fernández wrote "I Wanted Sex But Not Like That"?
... that the meagre attendance at the 1960 European Nations' Cup Final in Paris was blamed on crowds who "wanted western European glamour, not mysterious teams from the other side of Europe"?

In the news

Dilip Kumar in 1946

Indian actor Dilip Kumar (pictured) dies at the age of 98.
In ice hockey, the Tampa Bay Lightning defeat the Montreal Canadiens in the Stanley Cup Finals.
President of Haiti Jovenel Moïse is assassinated and interim prime minister Claude Joseph assumes leadership.
Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky Air Flight 251 crashes on approach to Palana Airport, Russia, killing all 28 people on board.

On this day

July 11

William Howard Taft

1405 – Admiral Zheng He's first expeditionary fleet of Chinese treasure ships departed Nanjing, beginning the Ming treasure voyages to the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean.
1801 – French astronomer Jean-Louis Pons co-discovered the first of his 37 comets, more than any other person in history.
1921 – Former president William Howard Taft (pictured) was sworn in as Chief Justice of the United States, making him the only person to date to have held both offices.
1991 – Shortly after taking off from Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria Airways Flight 2120 caught fire and crashed, killing all 261 people on board.
2011 – An explosion at the Evangelos Florakis Naval Base killed 13 people, including the head of the Cyprus Navy.

Nicole Oresme (d. 1382)
Thomas Bowdler (b. 1754)
Alessia Cara (b. 1996)

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Today's featured picture

Emily J. Harding (1850–1940) was a British artist, illustrator and suffragette, and a member of the Artists' Suffrage League. This poster, created by Harding around 1907 to 1918 in support of the suffrage movement in the United Kingdom, depicts a woman wearing an academic cap and gown standing inside a locked gate with a "convict" and a "lunatic", to illustrate the fact that none of the three had a vote for Parliament.

Poster credit: Emily J. Harding; restored by Adam Cuerden

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