Wikipedia:Main Page history/2017 December 31

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From today's featured article

The birthday-number effect is the unconscious tendency of people to prefer the numbers in the date of their birthday over other numbers. First reported in 1997 by Japanese psychologists Shinobu Kitayama and Mayumi Karasawa, the birthday-number effect has been shown to hold across age and gender. The effect is most prominent for numbers over 12. Birth dates are unconsciously associated with the self, and most people like themselves; this has been offered as an explanation for the effect. Conversely, people who do not like themselves tend not to exhibit the effect. One lab study revealed an increase in favourable attitudes towards prices that were secretly manipulated to match the day of the month of the subjects’ birth, but a second study using birth year as price did not lead to the same result. People also have an unconscious preference for the letters in their name, and the two effects are significantly correlated. Another study found that participants with high self-esteem tended to prefer product names that included numbers from their birthday along with letters from their name. (Full article...)

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Did you know...

Tyburn gallows, 1680

... that the highwayman Tom Cox kicked the priest and hangman out of the cart taking him to be hanged at Tyburn (pictured)?
... that Salsa Big Band by Panamanian artists Rubén Blades and Roberto Delgado & Orquesta won the 2017 Latin Grammy Award for Album of the Year?
... that Itunu Hotonu, the first female admiral in Africa, joined the Nigerian Navy only because she was rejected by the army?
... that Lisbeth's brooding anemone and Fernald's brooding anemone both care for their young, but they use different strategies?
... that between 1993 and 2008, Kyrgyz politician Azamat Arapbayev was either the chairman, director or deputy director of seven different companies?
... that Human Nature is Brought Forth by Decree, an ancient Chinese philosophical text, was rediscovered about 2,300 years after it was buried?
... that despite winning his country's Professional Championship by ten strokes that year, golfer Paddy Mahon was excluded from the 1937 Ryder Cup for being Irish?
... that the dual systems model seeks to explain why young people do stupid things?

In the news

HMAS AE1 in 1914

George Weah is elected President of Liberia.
Peruvian President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski pardons jailed ex-president Alberto Fujimori.
Typhoon Tembin sweeps through the southern Philippines, killing more than two hundred people and leaving dozens of others missing.
HMAS AE1 (pictured), a Royal Australian Navy submarine lost at sea in 1914, is located off the Duke of York Islands.
In the Catalan election, pro-independence parties, spearheaded by the exiled Carles Puigdemont, secure a majority.

On this day...

December 31

Painting of helicopter rescue efforts at the Dupont Plaza Hotel fire

1775 – American Revolutionary War: At the Battle of Quebec, British forces repulsed an attack by the Continental Army to capture Quebec City and enlist French Canadian support.
1857 – Queen Victoria selected Ottawa, then a small logging town, to be the capital of the British colony of Canada.
1963 – Despite Prime Minister Roy Welensky's efforts, the Central African Federation officially collapsed, subsequently becoming three separate nations: Zambia, Malawi and Rhodesia.
1986 – Three disgruntled employees set fire to the Dupont Plaza Hotel in San Juan, Puerto Rico, killing more than 90 people and injuring 140 others (rescue efforts depicted), making it the second deadliest hotel fire in United States history.
1999 – Panama took control of the Panama Canal Zone from the United States, in accordance with the 1977 Torrijos–Carter Treaties.

Carlo Gimach (d. 1730) · Mary Logan Reddick (b. 1914) · Diane von Fürstenberg (b. 1946)

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Today's featured picture

USS Essex was an aircraft carrier and the lead ship of the Essex class built for the United States Navy during World War II. Commissioned in December 1942, Essex participated in several campaigns in the Pacific Theater of Operations, earning the Presidential Unit Citation and thirteen battle stars. Decommissioned shortly after the end of the war, she was modernized and recommissioned in the early 1950s as an attack carrier (CVA), and then eventually became an antisubmarine aircraft carrier (CVS). In her second career, she served mainly in the Atlantic, playing a role in the Cuban Missile Crisis. She also participated in the Korean War, earning four battle stars and the Navy Unit Commendation. She was decommissioned for the last time in 1969 and sold for scrap in 1975.

Photograph: United States Navy

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