Wikipedia:Main Page history/2018 December 16

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From today's featured article

Interstate 470 (I-470) is a 10.63-mile-long (17.1-kilometer) auxiliary Interstate Highway of I-70 that bypasses the city of Wheeling, West Virginia, in the United States. It is the only auxiliary Interstate Highway in West Virginia. The western terminus of I-470 is an interchange with I-70 in Richland Township, Ohio. Passing southeast through rural Belmont County, I-470 crosses the Ohio River on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Bridge, entering Ohio County, West Virginia, at a complex three-level diamond interchange with concurrent highways U.S. Route 250 and West Virginia Route 2. After turning east towards Bethlehem, it terminates at I-70 in West Virginia near Elm Grove. The freeway was built between 1975 and 1983. On average, between 25,500 and 37,840 vehicles use the highway daily. The West Virginia portion of I-470 has been named the USS West Virginia Memorial Highway since December 2000, commemorating the attack on Pearl Harbor. (Full article...)

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Did you know...

Hakea pulvinifera

... that the shrub Hakea pulvinifera (pictured) was first described in 1962, believed extinct in 1971, and rediscovered in 1988?
... that when the student Li Xifan published articles criticizing the scholar Yu Pingbo, Mao Zedong praised the "nobody" Li and launched an attack on the "bigwig" Yu?
... that "House of the King" by Focus has been a theme tune on British television twice?
... that chef Moshe Basson forages for wild plants and herbs in the Jerusalem hills to use in his traditional regional cuisine at The Eucalyptus restaurant?
... that Ameenpur Lake is both the first water body and the first urban environment in India to be declared a Biodiversity Heritage Site?
... that Latvian artist Rūdolfs Pērle was sent to the Caucasus front in World War I as an expert on observation balloons?
... that an Armenian church in Istanbul was demolished in 1958 and rebuilt years later half as wide, to make room for the street?
... that Journal Herald columnist Marj Heyduck was photographed in a different hat for each of her daily columns, totaling more than 2,500 different hats?

In the news

Christmas market in Strasbourg

Nine people are killed when a high-speed train collides with a locomotive in Ankara, Turkey.
Two days after a shooting at the Christmas market (pictured in 2014) in Strasbourg, France, in which four people died, French police kill the suspected perpetrator.
Scientists announce that Voyager 2 has left the heliosphere and entered interstellar space, becoming the second artificial object to do so.
In South American association football, the Copa Libertadores concludes with River Plate defeating Boca Juniors in the finals.

On this day

December 16: National Day in Bahrain; Day of Reconciliation in South Africa

New World Symphony, 1st movement

1653 – Oliver Cromwell became Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England.
1893 – Czech composer Antonín Dvořák's New World Symphony (audio featured) premiered at Carnegie Hall in New York City.
1918 – Vincas Mickevičius-Kapsukas declared the formation of the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic, a puppet state created by Soviet Russia to justify the Lithuanian–Soviet War.
1938 – Adolf Hitler instituted the Cross of Honour of the German Mother as an order of merit for German mothers.
2014 – A hostage crisis in a Lindt chocolate café in Sydney, Australia, came to an end when police stormed the building, killing the perpetrator, but also one of the hostages.

Nathaniel Fiennes (d. 1669) · Stuart Donaldson (b. 1812) · H. D. Kumaraswamy (b. 1959)

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Today's featured picture

The Fountain of Qayt Bay is a domed public fountain (sabil) located on the western esplanade of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem's Old City, situated fifty metres west of the Dome of the Rock. Built in the fifteenth century by the Egyptians, it was completed in the reign of Qaitbay, Sultan of Egypt, after whom it is named. Placed on a raised prayer platform, together with a freestanding mihrab, the fountain is a three-tiered structure with a height of more than 13 metres (43 ft), and sits above an underground reservoir.

Photograph: Godot13

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