Wikipedia:Main Page history/2020 March 9

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From today's featured article

Radar image of Hurricane Hattie

Hurricane Hattie was the strongest and deadliest tropical cyclone of the 1961 Atlantic hurricane season. The ninth tropical storm and seventh hurricane of the season, Hattie became a major hurricane on October 28 and strengthened to Category 5, with reported maximum sustained winds of 165 mph (270 km/h). It produced hurricane-force winds and caused one death on San Andres Island, and it dropped rainfall of up to 11.5 in (290 mm) on Grand Cayman. It weakened to Category 4 before making landfall on October 31 in British Honduras (now Belize). In Belize City, 70% of the buildings were damaged, leaving more than 10,000 people homeless and prompting the government to relocate the country's capital inland to Belmopan. Across the country, 307 people were killed. Elsewhere in Central America, Hattie killed 11 people in Guatemala and one in Honduras. (This article is part of a featured topic: 1961 Atlantic hurricane season.)

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Did you know ...

Washington Building

... that the Washington Building (pictured) was described as "probably the first building to attract the foreigner" who arrived in Manhattan?
... that former slave Dorothy Thomas purchased her own manumission, but later employed slaves as hucksters?
... that the title of the play The House of Yes came from a piece of bathroom graffiti seen by its author?
... that the Hebrides Terrace Seamount, west-southwest of the Scottish Hebrides, hosts "coral gardens" where numerous other animals live?
... that industrialists John Huntington, Hinman Hurlbut, and Horace Kelley each independently bequeathed funds that would be used to form the Cleveland Museum of Art in 1913?
... that Toyota won the 2018 24 Hours of Le Mans, becoming the first Japanese car manufacturer to win the race since Mazda in the 1991 edition?
... that three communities in New Hampshire vote at midnight during the state's presidential primaries and elections?
... that after vehicle thief Líctor Hazael Marroquín García died in 1985, a Mexican drug lord sent flowers to his grave twice a year?

In the news

Alyssa Healy

In cricket, the Women's T20 World Cup concludes with Australia defeating India in the final (player of the match Alyssa Healy pictured).
Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara win the Pritzker Architecture Prize.
In the United States, a tornado outbreak hits four counties around Nashville, Tennessee, killing twenty-five people.
Muhyiddin Yassin becomes the prime minister of Malaysia following a political crisis which led to the resignation of his predecessor, Mahathir Mohamad.

On this day

March 9: Fast of Esther (Judaism, 2020); National Heroes and Benefactors Day in Belize (2020); Commonwealth Day in the Commonwealth of Nations (2020)

Costume sketch for the original production of Nabucco

1009 – The first known record of the name of Lithuania appeared in an entry of the Annals of Quedlinburg, written in Saxony-Anhalt, present-day Germany.
1842 – Nabucco (costume pictured), an opera by Italian composer Giuseppe Verdi that established his reputation, premiered at La Scala in Milan.
1945 – World War II: In a coup d'état, Imperial Japanese Army officers ousted the government of French Indochina.
2010 – The first legal U.S. same-sex marriages south of the Mason–Dixon line took place in the District of Columbia.

Catherine of Bologna (d. 1463) · Mary Harris Armor (b. 1863) · Takaaki Kajita (b. 1959)

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From today's featured list

Maya Angelou

African-American writer and poet Maya Angelou was honored by universities, literary organizations, government agencies, and special interest groups. Her honors include a Pulitzer Prize nomination for her book of poetry Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water 'fore I Diiie, a Tony Award nomination for her role in the 1973 play Look Away, and five Grammys for her spoken albums. Angelou served on two presidential committees – for Gerald Ford in 1975 and for Jimmy Carter in 1977. She was awarded the National Medal of Arts by President Bill Clinton in 2000, as well as the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor in the U.S., by President Barack Obama in 2010. More than thirty health care and medical facilities have been named after Angelou, and she was awarded more than fifty honorary degrees. (Full list...)

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Today's featured picture

Yuri Gagarin (9 March 1934 – 27 March 1968) was a Soviet Air Forces pilot and cosmonaut who became the first human to journey into outer space; his capsule, Vostok 1, completed a single orbit of Earth on 12 April 1961. Gagarin became an international celebrity and was awarded many medals and titles, including Hero of the Soviet Union, his nation's highest honour. In 1967, he served as a member of the backup crew for the ill-fated Soyuz 1 mission, after which the Russian authorities, fearing for the safety of such an iconic figure, banned him from further spaceflights. However, he was killed the following year, when the MiG-15 training jet that he was piloting with his flight instructor Vladimir Seryogin crashed near the town of Kirzhach.

This photograph of Gagarin, dated July 1961, was taken at a press conference during a visit to Finland approximately three months after his spaceflight.

Photograph credit: Arto Jousi; restored by Adam Cuerden

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