Wikipedia:Main Page history/2015 February 25

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From today's featured article

"The Unnatural" is the 19th episode of the sixth season of the American science fiction television series The X-Files, which first aired on April 25, 1999, on the Fox network. The series centers on FBI special agents Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson), who work on cases linked to the paranormal. This episode was written and directed by Duchovny (pictured), and received positive reviews from critics and a viewership of 16.88 million people on its debut. In the episode, Arthur Dales (M. Emmet Walsh), the brother of a previously recurring retired FBI agent, tells Mulder the story of a black baseball player who played for the Roswell Grays in Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947 under the pseudonym "Josh Exley" (Jesse L. Martin). Exley is actually an alien who is later tracked down by the Alien Bounty Hunter (Brian Thompson) and executed for betraying his people. The episode was inspired by the 1947 Roswell Incident. Many of the outdoor baseball scenes were filmed at Jay Littleton Ballfield, an all-wood stadium in Ontario, California. The episode has been critically examined for its use of literary motifs, its fairy tale-like structure, and its themes of racism and alienation. (Full article...)

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Did you know...

From Wikipedia's new and recently improved content:

... that "Zephyrette" refers to both a hostess on the California Zephyr (pictured) and a Budd Rail Diesel Car service between Oakland, California, and Salt Lake City?
... that Hawanatu Bangura, who was a flag bearer at the 2004 Athens Games, is still the youngest-ever member of the Sierra Leone Olympic team?
... that the Eastern Pilbara Craton contains pieces of Earth crust that are 3.6 billion years old?
... that "Walking Down Madison" is the first song Johnny Marr wrote after the dissolution of The Smiths?
... that professional cyclist Fredrik Ludvigsson rides in the same team as his older brother Tobias?
... that Ralph Benatzky wrote the libretto and music for Meine Schwester und ich, a "more intellectual, more cabaret-style" operetta which premiered in Berlin in 1930?
... that the 1-mile (1.6 km) long Paddy Run has been used as an industrial water supply?
... that Bagboy is a "spin-off of a spin-off of a show within a show"?

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In the news

Nine people, including the gunman, are killed in a shooting in the Czech town of Uherský Brod.
Birdman wins four Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director (Alejandro González Iñárritu, pictured), at the Academy Awards.
In stock car racing, Joey Logano wins NASCAR's Daytona 500.
Prokopis Pavlopoulos is elected President of Greece.
Limpet teeth are found to have the highest tensile strength among biomaterials, outperforming spider silk.
At least sixteen people are killed in a stampede at a Mardi Gras parade in Port-au-Prince, Haiti.

Ongoing: Boko Haram – Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant – War in Ukraine
Recent deaths: Clark Terry – Daniel Topolski – D. Ramanaidu

On this day...

February 25: Soviet Occupation Day in Georgia (1921); National Day in Kuwait (1961)

1570 – Pope Pius V issued the papal bull Regnans in Excelsis to excommunicate Queen Elizabeth I and her followers in the Church of England.
1836 – American inventor and industrialist Samuel Colt received a patent for a "revolving gun", later known as a revolver.
1948 – Fearful of civil war and Soviet intervention in recent unrest, Czechoslovakian president Edvard Beneš (pictured) ceded control over the government to the Communist Party.
1992 – Nagorno-Karabakh War: Armenian armed forces killed 613 ethnic Azerbaijani civilians from the town of Khojali in the Nagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan.
2011 – The Fianna Fáil-led government suffered the worst defeat of a sitting Irish government since the formation of the Irish state in 1921.

More anniversaries: February 24 – February 25 – February 26

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It is now February 25, 2015 (UTC) – Reload this page

Today's featured picture

The European wildcat (Felis silvestris silvestris) is a subspecies of the wildcat. It is native to the forests and grasslands of Europe, as well as Turkey and the Caucasus Mountains. Bulkier than both the African wildcat and the domestic cat, the European wildcat is also distinguished by its thick fur and non-tapered tail. Though it is predominantly nocturnal, the European wildcat may be active in the daytime in the absence of humans.

Photograph: Luc Viatour

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