Wikipedia:Main Page history/2017 April 12

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From today's featured article

Everglades National Park is a U.S. National Park in Florida that protects the southern 20 percent of the original Everglades. It is the largest tropical wilderness in the United States and the third-largest national park in the lower 48 states after Death Valley and Yellowstone. The park was established in 1934 when canal-building projects in South Florida were threatening the quickly vanishing Everglades, a network of wetlands and forests fed by a river flowing out of Lake Okeechobee into Florida Bay. It was the first national park created to protect a fragile ecosystem. The park is the most significant breeding ground for tropical wading birds in North America and contains the largest mangrove ecosystem in the western hemisphere. It is home to 36 threatened or protected species including the Florida panther, the American crocodile, and the West Indian manatee, and supports 350 species of birds, 300 species of fresh and saltwater fish, 40 species of mammals, and 50 species of reptiles. Most of South Florida's fresh water comes from the Biscayne Aquifer, which is replenished by the Everglades. (Full article...)

Part of the Everglades series, one of Wikipedia's featured topics.

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Did you know...

Mary and Christ

... that Michelangelo destroyed parts of his own Sistine Chapel ceiling to make room for his Last Judgement (detail pictured)?
... that Chris Marron jointly holds the record for the most goals scored in an FA Cup match, having scored 10 in one game?
... that as the Nazis invaded France in 1940, radio station Paris-Mondial began broadcasting "recordings of military marches and panicked appeals for guns, tanks, and planes"?
... that award-winning graphic novelist Miriam Katin only started creating comics at the age of 63?
... that J. Lamar Worzel was a recipient of the Navy Meritorious Public Service Award for his part in helping discover the first nuclear submarine lost at sea?
... that the "I believe that we will win!" chant, used as a rallying cry by United States fans during the 2014 FIFA World Cup, was first used for the college football Army–Navy Game?
... that Anil Kumar Mandal developed an alternative surgical protocol for treating pediatric glaucoma?
... that Pu Songling based his pigeon collector character on a real-life stone fanatic?

In the news

Sergio García

In golf, Sergio García (pictured) defeats Justin Rose in a playoff to win the Masters Tournament.
At least 44 people are killed and 126 others injured when two Egyptian Coptic Orthodox churches are attacked on Palm Sunday by suicide bombers.
The Basque separatist militant group ETA disarms itself.
A stolen truck is driven through crowds and into a department store in downtown Stockholm, killing 4 people and injuring 15 others.
The United States attacks a Syrian air base in response to a chemical attack in Khan Shaykhun that killed more than 70 people.
Tim Berners-Lee wins the Turing Award for inventing the World Wide Web, the first web browser, and the protocols and algorithms that allow the Web to scale.

On this day...

April 12: Yuri's Night; Cosmonautics Day in Russia

Terry Fox

1776 – The fourth North Carolina Provincial Congress passed the Halifax Resolves, the first official action in the American colonies calling for independence from Britain during the American Revolution.
1831 – Broughton Suspension Bridge in Manchester, England, collapsed, reportedly because of mechanical resonance induced by troops marching in step over the bridge.
1910 – SMS Zrínyi, one of the last pre-dreadnoughts built by the Austro-Hungarian Navy, was launched.
1980 – Terry Fox (pictured) dipped his artificial leg in the Atlantic Ocean at St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador, and began running his "Marathon of Hope" towards the Pacific Ocean at Vancouver, British Columbia, to raise funds across Canada for cancer research.
2007 – The canteen of the Council of Representatives of Iraq building was attacked by a suicide bomber, killing one Member of Parliament and wounding 23 other people.

Peter Hesketh-Fleetwood (d. 1866) · Beverly Cleary (b. 1916) · Xin Fengxia (d. 1998)

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Today's featured picture

The lady chapel at Salisbury Cathedral, an Anglican cathedral in Salisbury, England. Pictured below the stained glass is an installation by the artist Nicholas Pope, called "The Apostles Speaking in Tongues Lit By Their Own Lamps".

Photograph: David Iliff

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