Wikipedia:Main Page history/2021 August 12

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From today's featured article

Malcolm McDowell

Star Trek Generations is a 1994 American science fiction film, the seventh in the Star Trek film series. Malcolm McDowell (pictured) joined cast members from the 1960s television show Star Trek and the 1987 spin-off The Next Generation, including William Shatner and Patrick Stewart. In the film, Captain Jean-Luc Picard of the USS Enterprise-D joins with Captain James T. Kirk to stop the villain Tolian Soran from destroying a planetary system. David Carson directed with photography by franchise newcomer John A. Alonzo. The distributor, Paramount, marketed the film with merchandising tie-ins, including toys, books, games, and the first website to ever promote a major motion picture. The film opened at the top of the United States box office its first week of release and grossed a total of $118 million worldwide. Critical reception was lukewarm, with critics divided on the film's characters and comprehensibility to a casual viewer. (Full article...)

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Did you know ...

Monymusk Reliquary, an 8th-century house-shaped shrine

... that early medieval house-shaped shrines (example pictured) were built as reliquaries to hold the remains of Irish saints?
... that while Pedro Joaquín Chamorro Barrios was exiled from Nicaragua and living in Costa Rica in the 1980s, his sister Claudia was there as Nicaragua’s ambassador?
... that Luke Prokop, an ice hockey prospect, is the first player under contract with a National Hockey League team to come out as gay?
... that while 1271 Avenue of the Americas was being built at New York City's Rockefeller Center, Marilyn Monroe re-launched the Center's long-dormant "Sidewalk Superintendents' Club"?
... that Serbian landowner Marija Trandafil spent a single day hungry, but she remembered the experience and became a major philanthropist in Novi Sad?
... that Tig Notaro replaced a cast member in Army of the Dead and was added through computer-generated imagery a year after filming had concluded?
... that Hong Kong wushu athlete Li Fai dropped out of the 1994 Asian Games after discovering she was pregnant?
... that an FCC hearing examiner scolded the owner of California radio station KCTY for having a "cavalier attitude" and at times being too lazy to put the station on the air?

In the news

Olympics closing ceremony

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change releases the first part of its Sixth Assessment Report on the state of knowledge of climate change and its effects.
The Summer Olympics close (ceremony pictured) in Tokyo, Japan, with the United States winning the most gold and total medals.
Belarusian sprinter Krystsina Tsimanouskaya travels to Poland on a humanitarian visa after attempts by the Belarus Olympic Committee to repatriate her against her will.

On this day

August 12

Quagga mare at London Zoo

1099 – The First Crusade concluded with the Battle of Ascalon and Fatimid forces under Al-Afdal Shahanshah retreating to Egypt.
1883 – The last known quagga (example pictured), a subspecies of the plains zebra, died at the Natura Artis Magistra zoo in Amsterdam.
1944 – World War II: In Sant'Anna di Stazzema, Italy, the Waffen-SS and the Brigate Nere murdered about 560 local villagers and refugees and burned their bodies.
1985 – Japan Airlines Flight 123 crashed into the ridge of Mount Takamagahara in Gunma Prefecture, killing 520 of 524 people on board in the world's worst single-aircraft aviation disaster.
1990 – Near Faith, South Dakota, American paleontologist Sue Hendrickson found one of the most complete discovered Tyrannosaurus rex skeletons, nicknamed Sue.

Archduchess Isabella Clara of Austria (b. 1629)
Thomas F. Mulledy (b. 1794)
Ladi Kwali (d. 1984)

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Today's featured picture

The Salvadoran peso was the currency of El Salvador between 1877 and 1919. This gold coin with a value of twenty pesos was minted in 1892, the year in which the Salvadoran mint was established and the production of gold and silver coins began in the country. Only 300 such twenty-peso gold coins were ever minted. This coin is part of the National Numismatic Collection at the National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C.

Coin design credit: El Salvador; photographed by the National Numismatic Collection

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