Wikipedia:Main Page history/2014 November 13

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From today's featured article

Sadie Harris is a recurring fictional character from the American television medical drama Grey's Anatomy, played by actress Melissa George (pictured). Introduced in November 2008 as a surgical intern who has an old companionship with the series' protagonist Meredith Grey (Ellen Pompeo), Harris eventually forms a friendship with Lexie Grey (Chyler Leigh), and departs after it is revealed she cheated her way into the surgical program. George's original contract included appearances in eight to eleven episodes of season five, with the possibility of becoming a series regular. Harris was originally planned to be a romantic foil for Erica Hahn (Brooke Smith) and Callie Torres (Sara Ramirez), but the role was retooled after the former left. After some speculation about the character's future, it was confirmed that she would not be joining the series; the final episode to include Harris was broadcast in February 2009. In response to assertions that Harris left to "de-gay" Grey's Anatomy, George explained that it was her own decision to leave. The character received mixed feedback from critics, and has been characterized as "naughty", "mischievous", and "nutty". (Full article...)

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Did you know...

From Wikipedia's new and recently improved content:

... that new school tattoos (example pictured) are not limited to traditional subjects and have included cultural icons like the USS Enterprise?
... that the "War Edition" of the sheet music for "My Belgian Rose" was physically smaller in order to conserve paper for World War I?
... that Gertrude Guillaume-Schack founded the German Cultural Association in 1880 to fight state-regulated prostitution?
... that a 2003 study reported that 87% of reservoirs supplying water to residential buildings in Kolkata, India, were contaminated?
... that Tim Frazier suffered a ruptured Achilles tendon during his college basketball career, as had his older sister seven years earlier?
... that the red-naped snake is a small, venomous snake and is listed as threatened in Victoria?
... that one of the arrangements on Glenn Branca's Lesson No. 1 includes a sledgehammer?

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In the news

The Philae lander, deployed from the European Space Agency's Rosetta probe, reaches the surface of Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko (pictured pre-landing).
In Mexico City, thousands protest the disappearance of 43 students and subsequent discovery of mass graves.
The ALMA radio telescope array shows a protoplanetary disk around the star HL Tauri.
In the United States midterm elections, the Republican Party wins control of the Senate and increases its majority in the House of Representatives.
In horse racing, Protectionist wins the Melbourne Cup.
One World Trade Center, at 1,776 feet (541 m) the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere, opens.

Ongoing: Ebola outbreak – Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant
Recent deaths: Acker Bilk

On this day...

November 13: Feast day of Saint John Chrysostom (Christianity)

1002 – King Æthelred II ordered the massacre of all Danes in England.
1642 – First English Civil War: The Royalist army engaged the much larger Parliamentarian army at the Battle of Turnham Green near Turnham Green, Middlesex.
1914 – Zaian War: Zaian Berber tribesmen routed French forces in Morocco at the Battle of El Herri.
1954 – Great Britain defeated France at the Parc des Princes in Paris to win the first Rugby League World Cup.
1989 – Hans-Adam II (pictured), reigning Prince of Liechtenstein, took the throne upon the death of his father.

More anniversaries: November 12 – November 13 – November 14

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It is now November 13, 2014 (UTC) – Reload this page

Today's featured picture

Anatomical diagram of a giant scallop, a species in the family Pectinidae. Colors are close to those in an actual animal, though shown with greater than natural contrast for emphasis. Not shown are the left gill, the veins on the left side of the body, and the left shell or "valve". The hinge line corresponds to the animal's dorsal side, though when living it usually rests "sideways", on its right. The giant scallop is equilateral and very nearly equivalved (having left and right valves close to the same size and shape), though this is not true of all, or even most, members of its family.

The scallop's nervous system is centered around the visceral ganglia, which constitute a kind of molluscan "brain". The head-to-tail longitudinal axis reaches from the anterior ear to the middle of the adductor muscle, making only a very small portion of the animal morphologically the "front" and the rest corresponding to its "back". The final loop of the intestine goes directly through the ventricle of the heart before it reaches its u-shaped terminus.

Diagram: K.D. Schroeder

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