Wikipedia:Main Page history/2017 August 19

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From today's featured article

Othniel Charles Marsh (left) and Edward Drinker Cope (right)

The Bone Wars were rivalries between paleontologists, mainly Edward Drinker Cope and Othniel Charles Marsh (pictured), that led to a surge of fossil discoveries during the Gilded Age of American history. Cope, of the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia, and Marsh, of the Peabody Museum of Natural History at Yale, competed using underhanded methods, resorting to bribery, theft, destruction of bones, and mutual attacks in scientific publications. They sought fossils in rich bone beds in Colorado, Nebraska, and Wyoming. From 1877 to 1892, they used their wealth and influence to finance their own expeditions and to procure services and dinosaur bones from fossil hunters. Cope and Marsh were financially and socially ruined by their attempts to disgrace each other, but their contributions to science and the field of paleontology, including many unopened boxes of fossils found after their deaths, were massive. Their efforts led to many new descriptions of dinosaur species, of which 32 remain valid today. The Bone Wars shed light on prehistoric life and sparked the public's interest in dinosaurs, leading to continued fossil excavation in North America in the decades to follow. (Full article...)

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Did you know...

Venus and Adonis

... that Titian's painting of Venus and Adonis (pictured) exists in "two-dog" and "three-dog" versions?
... that when the Minneapolis School Board decided to include North Germanic languages in the curriculum, Maren Michelet became the first teacher of Norwegian in a public high school in the US?
... that in his memoir Interventions: A Life in War and Peace, Kofi Annan asserts that internal African politics and leadership are largely responsible for Africa's problems?
... that Brian Bellhouse invented a needle-free and pain-free injection system which was eventually sold for £542 million?
... that four members of the Hawkins family died violent deaths after winning their lawsuit against Shaw, Mississippi?
... that Marvel Comics briefly operated an imprint dedicated to comics about musicians?
... that current places of worship on the Isle of Wight include two of England's oldest Catholic churches and several Anglican churches by Thomas Hellyer, an architect described by Pevsner as "very individualistic"?
... that Omar Narváez hit his first Major League home run on his father's birthday?

In the news

La Rambla, Barcelona, in 2011

Three separate attacks in Barcelona (location pictured) kill at least fifteen people and injure more than one hundred others.
At least four hundred people are killed by mudslides in and around Freetown, Sierra Leone.
In golf, Justin Thomas wins the PGA Championship.
A suicide bombing in Quetta, Pakistan, kills fifteen people and injures forty others.
In eSports, The International Dota 2 tournament concludes with Team Liquid defeating Newbee.

On this day...

August 19

The Beatles in 1964

1745 – Bonnie Prince Charlie raised the Jacobite standard at Glenfinnan in the Scottish Highlands to begin the Second Jacobite Rising.
1934 – A German referendum supported the recent merging of the posts of Chancellor and President, consolidating Adolf Hitler's assumption of supreme power.
1964 – Over 17,000 fans saw the Beatles (pictured) on the opening date of the group's first nationwide U.S. tour.
1987 – A 27-year-old unemployed local labourer shot and killed sixteen people and wounded fifteen others before fatally shooting himself in Hungerford, Berkshire, England, one of the worst criminal atrocities involving firearms in British history.
2003 – A Hamas suicide bomber killed 23 people and wounded over 130 others on a crowded public bus in the Shmuel HaNavi quarter in Jerusalem.

Samuel Richardson (b. 1689) · Tom Wills (b. 1835) · Paweł Jasienica (d. 1970)

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Today's featured picture

The Biham–Middleton–Levine traffic model for a 144 x 89 lattice, with a traffic density of 28%. The model has self-organized to a free-flowing phase. The red cars and blue cars take turns to move; the red ones only move rightwards, and the blue ones move downwards. Every time, all the cars of the same colour try to move one step if there is no car in front. This video has been sped up such that only one in four frames is shown.

See the globally jammed phase

Film: Dllu

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