Wikipedia:Today's featured list/August 2016
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August 1
Athletes from 32 National Olympic Committees (NOCs) won medals at the 1936 Summer Olympics, of which 21 secured at least one gold medal. The 1936 Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the XI Olympiad, was an international multi-sport event held in Berlin, Germany, from 1 August to 16 August. The 1936 Games had 3,963 athletes from 49 NOCs participating in a total of 129 events in 19 sports. The host NOC, Germany, received a total of 89 medals, a record for a united German team, although East Germany broke that record in 1976, 1980 and 1988. Marjorie Gestring became the youngest Olympic champion ever at the age of 13, winning a gold medal in the women's 3 meter springboard. While a boycott by the United States was suggested due to Germany's National Socialist regime, it was not implemented as the President of the United States Olympic Committee, Avery Brundage, felt that politics should be kept separate from sport. While no NOCs ended up boycotting the Games on anti-Nazi grounds, a multinational Jewish-led boycott of the Games took place, with individual athletes refusing to take part. (Full list...)
August 5
Keith Floyd's writing and broadcasting career lasted from 1981 until his death in 2009. He began working in the restaurant trade in the late 1960s before opening his bistro in 1971, soon followed by two other outlets. When his business went bankrupt he sailed around the Mediterranean for two years and opened another restaurant in the South of France, which was also a financial failure. He published his first cookbook—Floyd's Food—in 1981, which led to a short recipe slot on the local Radio West station. The producer David Pritchard suggested to Floyd that he front a television series, which led to a broadcasting career that started with Floyd on Fish, aired on BBC Television in late 1985. Several series followed and a corresponding book appeared with each series. There were no scripts for the programmes, and Floyd ad-libbed throughout; when he ran out of words, he would sip from an ever-present glass of wine to give him time to create the next line. Floyd also had a one-man show, Floyd Uncorked: The Life of a Bon Viveur. (Full list...)
August 8
The video game Guitar Hero Live has 42 songs on its disc. Guitar Hero Live is a 2015 music video game developed by FreeStyleGames and published by Activision. It is the first title in the Guitar Hero series since it went on hiatus after 2011, and the first game in the series available for 8th generation video game consoles (PlayStation 4, Wii U, and Xbox One). The title is considered a reboot of the series; instead of using a five-button guitar-shaped game controller, the game shipped with a six-button controller, arranged in two rows of three aimed to provide more realistic fingering positions than the five-button controller. The songs are presented in sets using full motion video taken from the first-person perspective of the lead guitarist as the background visuals to create an immersive experience. Guitar Hero Live does not use traditional downloadable content to expand the game and is not backward compatible with previous songs from Guitar Hero games. Instead, the game includes the online Guitar Hero TV (GHTV) mode modeled after music video channels that players can jump in or out of at any time, playing through ongoing songs in a curated fashion. (Full list...)
August 12
The Hughes Medal is awarded by the Royal Society of London "in recognition of an original discovery in the physical sciences, particularly electricity and magnetism or their applications". Named after David E. Hughes, the medal is awarded with a gift of £1000. The medal was first awarded in 1902 to J. J. Thomson (pictured) "for his numerous contributions to electric science, especially in reference to the phenomena of electric discharge in gases", and has since been awarded over one hundred times. Unlike other Royal Society medals, the Hughes Medal has never been awarded to the same individual more than once. The medal has on occasion been awarded to multiple people at a time; in 1938 it was won by John Cockcroft and Ernest Walton, in 1981 by Peter Higgs and Tom Kibble, in 1982 by Drummond Matthews and Frederick Vine and in 1988 by Archibald Howie and M.J. Whelan. (Full list...)
August 15
The discography of Jessica Mauboy, an Australian R&B recording artist, consists of three studio albums, one live album, one extended play, and twenty-eight singles (including one charity single). Mauboy was the runner-up on the fourth season of Australian Idol in 2006, and subsequently signed a contract with Sony Music Australia. She released her debut live album The Journey in February 2007, which features songs she performed as part of the top twelve on Australian Idol. The album debuted at number four on the ARIA Albums Chart and was certified gold by the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA). Mauboy released her debut studio album Been Waiting in November 2008, which peaked at number eleven on the ARIA Albums Chart and spent fifty-nine weeks in the top fifty. The album was certified double platinum, denoting shipments of 140,000 copies, and became the second highest-selling Australian album of 2009. Mauboy's second studio album Get 'Em Girls was released in November 2010, debuted at number six and was certified gold. Her third studio album Beautiful was released in October 2013, debuted at number three and was certified platinum. (Full list...)
August 19
Costa Rica is administratively divided into seven provinces which are subdivided into 81 cantons, and these are further subdivided into districts. Cantons are the only administrative division in Costa Rica that possess local government in the form of municipalities. Each municipality has its own mayor and several representatives, all of them chosen via municipal elections every four years. The original 14 cantons were established in 1848, and the number has risen gradually by the division of existing cantons. Law no. 4366 of 19 August 1969, which outlines the creation of administrative divisions of Costa Rica, states that new cantons may only be created if they have at least one percent of the republic's total population, which was 4,301,712 as of the last census (2011). The largest canton by population is the capital San José (pictured) with a population of 288,054. The smallest canton by population is Turrubares with 5,512 residents. (Full list...)
August 22
Twenty-nine people are recorded as having directed fictional films in the Dutch East Indies between 1926, when L. Heuveldorp released Loetoeng Kasaroeng, the colony's first domestically produced film, and 1949, when the Dutch formally recognised Indonesia's sovereignty after a four-year revolution, leaving the Dutch East Indies defunct. Following a three-year Japanese occupation during World War II, Indonesia proclaimed its independence in 1945, an action which was not well-received by the Dutch. Thirteen directors active in the Indies continued to direct films after 1950, including Usmar Ismail: his 1950 film Darah dan Doa (The Long March) is generally considered the first truly Indonesian film. The colony's first directors, Heuveldorp and G. Kruger, were of European or mixed descent. They were followed by ethnic Chinese soon after, when Nelson Wong made his debut in 1928 with Lily van Java. Ethnic Chinese directors dominated the colony's cinema for the remainder of its existence. The first native director, Bachtiar Effendi (pictured), made his debut in 1932 with the talkie Njai Dasima. The directors active in the Indies came from various backgrounds. (Full list...)
August 26
Fifty-seven tornadoes touched down across eight U.S. states in a moderate tornado outbreak spawned by Hurricane Katrina's outer bands. The event spanned August 26–31, 2005. Due to extreme devastation in coastal areas of Louisiana and Mississippi, multiple tornadoes may have been overlooked—overshadowed by the effects of storm surge and large-scale wind—and thus the full extent of the hurricane's tornado outbreak is uncertain. The outbreak began with an isolated F2 over the Florida Keys on August 26; no tornadoes were recorded the following day as the storm traversed the Gulf of Mexico. Four weak tornadoes were observed on August 28 as the hurricane approached land, each causing little damage. Coincident with Katrina's landfall, activity began in earnest on August 29 with numerous tornadoes touching down across Gulf Coast states. Georgia suffered the greatest impact on this day, with multiple F1 and F2 tornadoes causing significant damage; one person died in Carroll County, marking the first known instance of a tornado-related death in the state during August. (Full list...)
August 29
The Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna is the highest sporting honour of the Republic of India. The award is named after Rajiv Gandhi, former Prime Minister of India and is given for the "spectacular and most outstanding performance in the field of sports" at various international events like the Olympic Games, Paralympic Games, Asian Games, and Commonwealth Games. The recipient(s) is/are selected by a committee constituted by the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports. Honoured for the performance in the year 1991–92, Chess Grandmaster Viswanathan Anand (pictured) was the first recipient of the award. Usually conferred upon only one sportsperson in a year, a few exceptions have been made when multiple recipients were awarded in a year. As of 2016, there have been thirty-two recipients from fourteen sport disciplines and the most recent recipients of the award are the badminton player P. V. Sindhu, gymnast Dipa Karmakar, sports shooter Jitu Rai, and wrestler Sakshi Malik. (Full list...)