Wikipedia:Main Page history/2018 February 3

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From today's featured article

Plunketts Creek is a 6.2-mile-long (10.0 km) tributary of Loyalsock Creek in Lycoming and Sullivan counties in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania. Its watershed drains 23.6 square miles (61 km²) in the Chesapeake Bay basin by way of the West Branch Susquehanna and Susquehanna rivers. The creek is named for Colonel William Plunkett, who led a Pennsylvania expedition in the Pennamite–Yankee War to forcibly remove settlers arriving from Connecticut, who were claiming lands that were also claimed by Pennsylvania. For his services, Plunkett was granted land that included the creek's mouth. The creek flows southwest and then south through the dissected Allegheny Plateau, through rock from the Mississippian sub-period and Devonian period. Much of the Plunketts Creek valley is composed of glacial deposits, chiefly alluvium. A potentially large source of natural gas, the Marcellus Shale, lies 1.5 to 2.0 miles (2.4 to 3.2 km) below the surface. Although the watershed was clear-cut and home to a tannery, sawmills, and a coal mine in the nineteenth century, today it is heavily wooded with abundant potable water. (Full article...)

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Did you know...

Portrait by school of Anthony van Dyck

... that a portrait (pictured) of the Cavalier Viscount Grandison caused a sensation at Detroit, but later turned out to be that of another man?
... that filming of the two-episode event "Gorilla City" on the third season of the 2014 television series The Flash was moved south of the original filming location, due to prolonged snowfall in Vancouver?
... that Savannah Jordan was the first soccer player in the history of the Southeastern Conference to be named SEC Offensive Player of the Year as a freshman?
... that Cortinarius metallicus got its name from its bluish metallic sheen?
... that during the Siege of Katsurayama, the castle garrison poured rice from their walls to fool the besiegers into thinking they had ample water?
... that at 0.7 miles (1.1 km) long, Interstate 878 is the shortest interstate highway in the U.S.?
... that when soprano Lucy Crowe became ill, her replacement Sabina Puértolas had only three hours to rehearse before performing at the Royal Opera House in London?
... that Palazzo Corpi, the longtime United States consulate in Istanbul, was acquired by the American government in a poker game?

In the news

Lunar eclipse of 31 January

A lunar eclipse (pictured) occurs, close to perigee and also the second full moon in a month, a coincidence of events not seen for 35 years.
In Yemen, separatists from the Southern Transitional Council seize government buildings in Aden from President Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi's forces.
Miloš Zeman is re-elected for a second term in the Czech presidential election.
A bombing in Kabul, Afghanistan, kills at least 103 people and injures more than 200 others.
In Miryang, South Korea, a hospital fire kills 37 people and injures more than 130 others.

On this day...

February 3: Setsubun in Japan; Four Chaplains' Day in the United States

José de San Martín

1781 – Fourth Anglo-Dutch War: British forces captured the Dutch island of Sint Eustatius after a brief skirmish.
1813 – Argentine War of Independence: José de San Martín (pictured) and his Regiment of Mounted Grenadiers were victorious against a royalist army in the Battle of San Lorenzo.
1916 – A fire destroyed the Centre Block, the main building of the Canadian parliamentary complex on Parliament Hill, in Ottawa, Ontario.
1933 – Adolf Hitler announced that the conquest of Lebensraum in Eastern Europe, and its "ruthless Germanisation", were the geopolitical objectives of Reich foreign policy.
1998 – Despite a large international movement advocating the commutation of her sentence to life imprisonment, Karla Faye Tucker became the first woman to be executed in the United States since 1984.

Caroline von Wolzogen (b. 1763) · Giuseppe Moretti (b. 1857) · C. N. Annadurai (d. 1969)

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Today's featured picture

Georg Giese (1497–1562) was a Hanse merchant from Danzig, Polish Prussia (now Gdańsk, Poland). During the 1530s he was stationed in London, where he was portrayed by Hans Holbein the Younger in 1532. By 1535 he had returned to his home city, where he married Christine Krüger, the daughter of a leading citizen.

Painting: Hans Holbein the Younger

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