Wikipedia:Main Page history/2021 May 12

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From today's featured article

The Boeing 747 is a large, long-range, wide-body airliner and cargo aircraft manufactured by Boeing Commercial Airplanes in the United States. On September 30, 1968, the first 747 was rolled out of the custom-built Everett Plant, the largest building in the world by volume. The first flight took place on February 9, 1969, and the 747 was certified that December. Entering service with Pan Am on January 22, 1970, it was the first airplane dubbed a "Jumbo Jet". The 747 is a quadjet, with ten-abreast economy seating typically accommodating 366 passengers. It has a pronounced 37.5° wing sweep, allowing a Mach 0.85 (490 kn; 560 mph; 900 km/h) cruise speed. Boeing introduced the 747-200 in 1971, with more powerful engines for a heavier maximum takeoff weight and a longer range. The heavier 747-400 was introduced in 1989 and is the most common variant. By June 2020, 1,556 aircraft had been built. As of 2020, 61 Boeing 747s have been lost in accidents, in which 3,722 people have died. (Full article...)

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Did you know ...

Kate Lutkins

... that Australian rules footballer Kate Lutkins (pictured), the best on ground at this year's AFL Women's Grand Final, played with a painful foot injury that required surgery?
... that Boris Carmeli, a basso profondo born in Poland who made an opera career in Italy, appeared in the world premieres of Penderecki's Seventh Symphony and Stockhausen's Sirius?
... that The New York Times puzzle editor Joel Fagliano published four crosswords in the paper before he finished high school?
... that all inmates of Nohra concentration camp, the first Nazi concentration camp, were communists?
... that the "Dirty Tricks" campaign run by British Airways against Virgin Atlantic involved BA staff working behind locked doors to illicitly obtain information about Virgin by pretending to be Virgin?
... that the Second Apocalypse of John paints a picture of the Last Judgement in which Christian emperors are driven like slaves and racial discrimination is no more?
... that Ken Bloom's real-life blog Quantum Diaries was a plot point on The Big Bang Theory?
... that in 1968, the inhabitants of a commune in Zealand, Denmark, named themselves after the valley Rivendell from J. R. R. Tolkien's fictional world of Middle-earth?

In the news

Mohamed Nasheed

At least nine people are killed in a school shooting in Kazan, Russia.
Israeli air-strikes and Hamas militant missile launches kill at least 26 people and injure hundreds more following clashes at the al-Aqsa Mosque and elsewhere in Jerusalem.
In Afghanistan, a bombing near a school in Kabul kills at least 85 people and injures more than 140 others.
Maldives speaker of parliament and former president Mohamed Nasheed (pictured) is injured with four others in a car bombing in Malé.

On this day

May 12

Replica of the Z3

1588 – Catholic Parisians under Henry I, Duke of Guise, protested the moderate policies of Henry III of France.
1881 – Under threat of invasion, Muhammad III as-Sadiq, Bey of Tunis, signed the Treaty of Bardo to make Tunisia a French protectorate.
1941 – German engineer Konrad Zuse presented the Z3 (replica pictured), the first working programmable and fully automatic computer, to an audience of scientists in Berlin.
2008 – In Postville, Iowa, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement conducted the largest-ever raid of a workplace and arrested nearly 400 immigrants for identity theft and document fraud.

Æthelhard (d. 805)
Katharine Hepburn (b. 1907)
Benjamin Sheares (d. 1981)

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Today's featured picture

The spotted wood owl (Strix seloputo) is a species of earless owl native to tropical southeastern Asia, growing to a length of about 44 to 48 cm (17 to 19 in) with a wing length of 30 to 36 cm (12 to 14 in). Its typical habitats include lowland forest, mangrove swamps, cleared woodland, plantations, and parks in urban areas, with a diet consisting mainly of mice and rats, supplemented by insects and small birds. This spotted wood owl was photographed in Pasir Ris Park, Singapore.

Photograph credit: John Harrison

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