Wikipedia:Recent additions 179

Did you know...

 * ...that Arumuga Navalar, a Hindu revivalist, also helped translate the Bible into Tamil?
 * ...that the Spanish military engineer Julio Cervera Baviera, a veteran of the Spanish-American War, pioneered radio technology in his native country?
 * ...that although it is commonly referred to as Fort Detroit, the fort William Hull surrendered to the British without a fight during the War of 1812 was actually named Fort Lernoult?
 * ...that British Conservative Member of Parliament Cyril Banks was friendly with Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser, and left his party over the Suez Crisis?
 * ...that Dr. Chris Hatcher convinced the jury in a capital punishment case without having interviewed the defendant?
 * ...that Joe Shishido transitioned from a moderately successful melodrama actor into a popular villain and then action star after he underwent plastic surgery to severely enlarge his cheeks?
 * ...that the festival of Qoyllur Rit'i (pictured) in the Cusco Region of Peru commemorates events which included the transformation of a boy into a bush with an image of Christ hanging from it?
 * ...that the New Zealand Journal of Forestry was first published in 1925 with a title in Māori?
 * ...that the first Hawaii showing of From Here to Eternity premiered at the Iao Theater?
 * ...that the Spanish military engineer Julio Cervera Baviera, a veteran of the Spanish-American War, pioneered radio technology in his native country?
 * ...that when former New Mexico Governor Tom Bolack died, his ashes were scattered over his ranch by 16 specially-made fireworks?
 * ...that Wilhelm Koppe, one of the chief Nazi Holocaust perpetrators in occupied Poland, escaped arrest and under false name managed a Bonn chocolate factory for over a decade?
 * ...that Will Wright, designer of the popular computer games SimCity and The Sims, won the 1980 U.S. Express, an illegal cross-country race from Brooklyn to Santa Monica?
 * ...that many works of the Romanian Symbolist poet Traian Demetrescu survived as popular romanzas after their author died from tuberculosis in 1896?
 * ...that Darren Heitner was a champion Nintendo video game player aged six and then defeated over 400,000 other students at age ten in a US educational poster contest run by the National Football League?
 * ...that the Colombian journalist Diana Turbay (monument pictured) was killed while kidnapped by the Medellin Cartel in order to create pressure against the Colombia-USA extradition treaty?
 * ...that merchant, sugar grower and politician George Raff helped establish the Brisbane government and was the main substantiater of wool trade between Brisbane and London?
 * ...that Gatot Soebroto, who would become a leader in the Indonesian independence movement, was expelled from elementary school for fighting?
 * ...that Dudley Ryder, a managing director of Coutts private bank for 40 years, was also a director of English Big Four bank NatWest for 19 years until he succeeded his father as 7th Earl of Harrowby?
 * ...that Edmund Blacket became known as "the Christopher Wren of Sydney" for building four cathedrals, 80 churches and a university?
 * ...that the book South Park and Philosophy: You Know, I Learned Something Today analyzes the animated television comedy series South Park using philosophical concepts?
 * ...that Catherine Pegge from Derbyshire had a son who was named Charles like his heirless and exiled father, Charles II of England?
 * ...that Chicago City Council alderman Vi Daley has proposed legislation that banks be forbidden to open within 600 ft of each other?
 * ...that William Wadsworth Hodkinson (pictured) merged 11 film rental bureaus in 1914 to form Paramount Pictures, the first U.S.-wide distributor of feature films?
 * ...that the Christian mission founded by Florence Young on her brothers’ sugar plantation in Queensland led her to make annual trips to the Solomon Islands for twenty years?
 * ...that when Dorothy Andrews Elston married Walter Kabis, she became the first, and so far the only, Treasurer of the United States to have her name changed while in office?
 * ...that the British General John Reid, second in command in Henry Bouquet's expedition against the western and Ohio Indians, was also a proficient flute-player and a musical composer?
 * ...that before the launch of a satellite, a group of scientists from ISRO's Master Control Facility at Hassan offer prayers to a miniature model of the satellite and donate it to a temple in Dharmasthala?
 * ...that passengers for Lympstone Commando railway station have to pass an armed guard as the only access is through the adjacent Royal Marine Commando Training Centre?
 * ...that the majority of St. Thomas' ciguatera cases are linked to the same species of fish, the bar jack, or Caranx ruber?
 * ...that sandstone layers (pictured) now exposed in the Canyons of the Escalante in Utah were deposited during the Mesozoic period, when the area was covered with sand dunes about 180 to 225 million years ago?
 * ...that NBA point guard John Bagley was the first Boston College Eagle to earn Big East Men's Basketball Player of the Year honors?
 * ...that Sakina Akhundzadeh is considered the first female playwright and dramatist in Azerbaijani literature?
 * ...that Craigiehall, a country house designed for the Earl of Annandale by Sir William Bruce in 1699, is now the headquarters of the British Army in Scotland?
 * ...that Summit Avenue in Saint Paul, Minnesota, a well preserved Victorian residential boulevard, is home to three National Historic Landmarks and five other structures on the National Register of Historic Places?
 * ...that rye and oats used to be crop-mimicking weeds before they became domesticated?
 * ...that Martin Meehan was the first person to be convicted of membership of the Provisional IRA and the last prisoner released following the abolition of internment in Northern Ireland?
 * ...that the largest known metal vessel from antiquity is an elaborately decorated bronze volute krater (pictured) discovered at the Vix Grave in Burgundy, France in 1953?
 * ...that, when it opened in 2000, Madame Tussauds Hong Kong was the only permanent wax museum in Asia?
 * ...that Blanca Errázuriz was acquitted of the murder of John de Saulles due to the testimony of Rudolf Valentino, who she had recently divorced?
 * ...that, according to Shinto tradition, four kami, including the soul of Emperor Meiji, are enshrined at the Shinto shrine Hokkaidō Jingū in Sapporo, Japan?
 * ...that in 2004, running back Mike Hart broke Ricky Powers' Michigan Wolverines freshman rushing record and matched Jon Vaughn, the only other Michigan back with consecutive 200-yard games?
 * ...that the Nanjing Massacre Memorial Hall houses the remains of victims of the Nanking Massacre in a building shaped like a coffin?
 * ...that over 60.1% of Colombian families are below the poverty threshold?
 * ...that the Greek submarine Delfin was the second submarine to enter service in the Greek navy?
 * ...that the entire population of Exuma Island Iguanas on Leaf Cay in the Bahamas was translocated to Pasture Cay in 2002 in an effort to protect the species?
 * ...that the Charter Arms Bulldog revolver (pictured) became notorious after it was revealed to be serial killer David Berkowitz's weapon of choice?
 * ...that the freshwater weed Azolla may have grown in the Arctic Ocean with enough vigour to plunge the world into an ice age?
 * ...that North American helitack crews are airlifted into remote areas to "attack" wildland fires before they get out of control?
 * ...that in the USSR, people no longer in good favor with the state such Nikolai Yezhov and Leon Trotsky were removed from photos to erase them from Soviet history?
 * ...that sky anchors combine a gas balloon for buoyancy and a superpressure balloon for ballast?
 * ...that lignosulfonates, wood pulp byproducts, are used to make concrete, tanned leather, and even artificial vanillin?
 * ...that Polish painter and politician Henryk Józewski protected Ukrainian leader Symon Petliura from extradition to Soviet Union by hiding him in his flat?
 * ...that a translocation mutation in chromosome 11 may result in mantle cell lymphoma?
 * ...that though Alfred Balfour was a British MP for 14 years, he made only a single speech in the House of Commons?
 * ...that English civil engineer James Trubshaw's straightening method used on Wybunbury's St Chad's tower in 1832 was later used to stabilise the Leaning Tower of Pisa?
 * ...that the Cogan House Covered Bridge (pictured) in Lycoming County, Pennsylvania, USA was built by a millwright who preassembled the frame in a field beside the sawmill to make sure it all fit?
 * ...that the mother of IRA prisoner Jackie McMullan chained herself to railings outside 10 Downing Street in London?
 * ...that the Solomon Islands Christian Association came out of a meeting of church representatives that included the future first Prime Minister and first Governor-General?
 * ...that the rules for a scrum in rugby union were changed in 2007 to try and reduce the number of serious neck injuries to players?
 * ...that the extinct crocodile-like Prionosuchus is the largest amphibian known to have existed?
 * ...that Admiral Clarence S. Williams, commander in chief of the U.S. Asiatic Fleet, directed a 1926 military intervention to protect foreign nationals in Shanghai at the start of the Chinese Civil War?
 * ...that the Coat of arms of Asturias bears the Victory Cross, a Christian cross carried by King Pelagius of Asturias of Spain at the Battle of Covadonga?
 * ...that Leonid Hurwicz, winner of the 2007 Nobel Prize in Economics at the age of ninety, is the oldest recipient of any Nobel Prize in any category?
 * ...that in an upcoming presentation ceremony at the White House, the late Navy SEAL Michael P. Murphy (pictured) will become the first person awarded the Medal of Honor for actions in the current War in Afghanistan?
 * ...that there is space for an additional 15,000 names to be added to the British Armed Forces Memorial?
 * ...that the Sapporo Factory in Japan, a building complex with a shopping mall, offices, a multiplex movie theatre and a Meissen porcelain museum, was originally constructed as a brewery?
 * ...that when British diplomat Sir Alan Campbell became ambassador to Ethiopia, he noticed people kneeling down in reverence as his car drove to the palace of Emperor Haile Selassie?
 * ...that missionary Don Richardson discovered that aborigines of Western New Guinea have a concept called the Peace Child which is very similar to the incarnation of Jesus?
 * ...that from 1747 to 1831, present-day Iraq was ruled by Georgian Mamluks?
 * ...that Los Angeles considered changing the name of the geographic region known as San Fernando Valley in 2002 to San Angeles, the same name used for the fictional city in the 1993 movie Demolition Man?
 * ...that the stock for the captive breeding program of the Galapagos Land Iguana (pictured) descended from iguanas which William Randolph Hearst translocated from Baltra Island to North Seymour Island in the 1930s?
 * ...that the Solomon Islander Peter Ambuofa, who had converted to Christianity while working on a sugar plantation in Queensland, was left to starve by his own relatives when he returned home?
 * ...that in 2004, a California Senate committee passed a youth suffrage constitutional amendment called Training Wheels for Citizenship to give 14-year-olds one-quarter of a vote and 16-year-olds one-half of a vote in state elections?
 * ...that low energy ion scattering causes various phenomena at a material's surface, that are used to explore its structure and composition?
 * ...that the accuracy of Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth was challenged in the English High Court of Justice case Dimmock v Secretary of State for Education and Skills?
 * ...that United States Presidential candidate Ron Paul has won a total of fifteen Republican straw polls, placing him second among all candidates yet remains near the bottom of statewide polls?
 * ...that early Indian Christians were Nestorians until the arrival of Portuguese in the 16th century introducing Roman Catholicism to the country?
 * ...that Albrecht Dürer's Joachim and Anne Meeting at the Golden Gate (pictured) is one of 16 woodcuts completed between 1501 and 1511, which display the Virgin as an intermediary between the divine and the earth, yet with a range of human frailties?
 * ...that Thomas de Dundee, later Bishop of Ross, was one of three men from the small Scottish burgh of Dundee studying Roman law at the University of Bologna at the same time in the later 13th century?
 * ...that the Yorkshire Museum paid £2.5 million for an item found in Yorkshire using a metal detector?