Wikipedia:Main Page history/2021 March 16

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From today's featured article

Zino's petrel (Pterodroma madeira) is a species of small seabird, endemic to Madeira. This gadfly petrel is grey above with a dark "W" across the wings. The wings are mainly blackish below, and the belly is white. It is very similar in appearance to Fea's petrel, both being formerly considered to be subspecies of the soft-plumaged petrel, but Zino's was raised to a species on criteria including morphology and mitochondrial DNA. Its breeding areas are a few ledges high in the mountains of Madeira, where it nests in burrows which are visited only at night. The single white egg is incubated by both adults, one sitting while the other feeds on fish and squid at sea. This species is subject to predation by introduced cats and rats, and in the past by humans. Predator control and the removal of grazing animals has enabled the population to recover although it remains listed as endangered on the IUCN Red List. There was a major setback in 2010 when fires killed three adults and 65 percent of the chicks. (Full article...)

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Did you know ...

Al Gettel

... that Al "Two Gun" Gettel (pictured) rode a horse onto the baseball field in full Western wear for a game?
... that Andrew Bahr drove a herd of 3,000 reindeer from Nome, Alaska, to Reindeer Station, earning the nickname "The Arctic Moses"?
... that ballerina Kay Mazzo created roles in three ballets choreographed by George Balanchine during the New York City Ballet's Stravinsky Festival in 1972?
... that during the first public reading of Wolfdietrich Schnurre's short story Das Begräbnis, part of the audience left the room in protest?
... that Geoffrey Kirk captained a fishing boat before becoming a professor of ancient Greek at Cambridge University?
... that the top-level domain .guru had 35,000 websites registered to it within the first three weeks of its release?
... that Lisa Martin captained the Scotland women's national rugby union team in 2018 to their first victory in Ireland for 12 years?
... that a 1958 promotion by Nashville radio station WKDA, in which a "purple people eater" climbed a hotel sign, prompted the police chief to ask the station "never to pull a trick" like it again?

In the news

Billie Eilish

Folklore by Taylor Swift wins Album of the Year and Billie Eilish's (pictured) "Everything I Wanted" wins Record of the Year at the Grammy Awards.
A data breach of Microsoft Exchange Server affects an estimated 250,000 servers globally.
A series of explosions in Bata, Equatorial Guinea, leaves at least 108 people dead and more than 600 others injured.
In Zamfara, Nigeria, 279 girls who had been kidnapped from a secondary school by armed bandits are released.

On this day

March 16: Remembrance Day of the Latvian Legionnaires

Samoset greeting the Pilgrims

597 BC – Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar II captured Jerusalem and installed Zedekiah as King of Judah.
1621 – Samoset, a member of the Abenaki tribe, walked into Plymouth Colony and greeted the Pilgrims in English (depicted).
1689 – The Royal Welch Fusiliers, one of the oldest line-infantry regiments of the British Army, was founded.
1918 – Finnish Civil War: The Whites won the Battle of Länkipohja, after which they executed at least 70 Reds.
2003 – American peace activist Rachel Corrie was crushed to death by an Israel Defense Forces armored bulldozer in Rafah while protesting the demolition of a Palestinian house.

Antoine-Jean Gros (b. 1771)
David Wilmot (d. 1868)
Jorge Ramos (b. 1958)

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Today's featured picture

Saint Petersburg, the second-largest city in Russia, is situated at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea. This photograph shows the eastern end of Vasilyevsky Island, known as the spit, surrounded by the river Neva. The Old Saint Petersburg Stock Exchange and Rostral Columns, built in the Greek Revival style in the first decade of the nineteenth century, is visible in the centre.

Photograph credit: Alexander Savin

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