Wikipedia:Main Page history/2016 February 28

From today's featured article

Pictor (Latin for "painter") is a small faint constellation between the brilliant star Canopus and the Large Magellanic Cloud in the Southern Celestial Hemisphere. Normally represented as an easel, Pictor was invented and named by Nicolas Louis de Lacaille in the 18th century. The constellation's brightest star is Alpha Pictoris, a white main sequence star of apparent magnitude 3.3. Pictor also hosts RR Pictoris, a cataclysmic variable star system that flared up as a nova in 1925, reaching magnitude 1.2. Pictor's second-brightest star, Beta Pictoris, is surrounded by an unusual dust disk rich in carbon. HD 40307, an orange dwarf, has six planets orbiting it, one of which—HD 40307 g—is a potential super-Earth in the circumstellar habitable zone. Kapteyn's Star, the nearest star in Pictor to Earth, is a red dwarf 12.76 light-years away that was found to have two super-Earths in orbit in 2014. Pictor A is a radio galaxy that is shooting a jet of plasma 800,000 light-years long from a supermassive black hole at its centre. In 2006, a gamma ray burst—GRB 060729—was observed in Pictor; its X-ray afterglow was detectable for nearly two years afterwards. (Full article...)

Halocnemum strobilaceum

... that the activity of crabs helped glasswort, Arthrocnemum macrostachyum and Halocnemum strobilaceum (pictured) to recolonise oil-polluted marshland?
... that Iarla Ó Lionáird sang "Casadh an tSúgáin" in Brooklyn?
... that the Of–Bayburt road in northeastern Turkey is considered one of the most dangerous routes, with over 20 steep hairpin turns?
... that the Pac-12 Conference award for men's basketball coach of the year was renamed in honor of John Wooden?
... that the Navalgund Durries are a type of Indian rug with geometric patterns and designs of birds and animals?
... that Governor Ye Liansong said he never thought of becoming a politician until he was told of his appointment as vice-mayor?
... that Puri hosts the famed Rath Yatra, attended by at least a million people every year?
... that James Maxie Ponder, St. Petersburg, Florida's first African-American physician, began a medical practice out of his home and accepted payment in poultry, vegetables, and ham?

Denny Hamlin

Tara Air Flight 193 crashes in Nepal, killing all twenty-three people on board.
In motorsport, Denny Hamlin (pictured) wins the Daytona 500 by 0.01 seconds, the narrowest margin in the race's history.
Cyclone Winston, the strongest tropical cyclone on record to strike Fiji, kills at least forty-two people.
Yoweri Museveni claims a fifth term as President of Uganda, in an election international observers have criticised as flawed.
A bombing in Ankara, Turkey, kills at least thirty people and injures more than sixty others.

February 28: Teachers' Day in the Arab world; Kalevala Day in Finland

Olof Palme

1874 – In one of the longest cases ever heard in an English court, the defendant was convicted of perjury for attempting to assume the identity of the heir to the Tichborne baronetcy.
1893 – USS Indiana, the lead ship of her class and the first battleship in the United States Navy comparable to foreign battleships of the time, was launched.
1914 – In the aftermath of the Balkan Wars, Greeks living in southern Albania proclaimed the Autonomous Republic of Northern Epirus.
1986 – Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme (pictured) was assassinated by a lone gunman in Stockholm while walking home from a movie theatre with his wife Lisbet Palme.
2002 – During the 2002 Gujarat violence in India, mobs of Hindus attacked Muslims in Naroda Patiya and Chamanpura, resulting in 166 deaths.

The 1648 ratification of the Peace of Münster, as painted the same year by Gerard ter Borch. With this treaty, which was reached after seven years of negotiations, Spain formally recognized the independence of the United Netherlands. The treaty contributed to the Peace of Westphalia, which ended both the Thirty Years' War and the Eighty Years' War.

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