Donkey Kong Country is a 1994 platform game developed by Rare and published by Nintendo for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. It follows the gorilla Donkey Kong and his nephew Diddy Kong as they set out to recover their stolen banana hoard from the crocodile King K. Rool and his army, the Kremlings. Nintendo commissioned Rare to revive the dormant Donkey Kong franchise as it sought a game to compete with Sega's Aladdin (1993). Donkey Kong Country was one of the first home-console games to feature pre-rendered graphics, achieved through a compression technique that converted 3D models into sprites with little loss of detail. It was released on 18 November 1994 to acclaim. Critics hailed its visuals as groundbreaking and praised its gameplay and music; it is frequently listed as one of the greatest games of all time. Donkey Kong Country re-established Donkey Kong as a popular Nintendo franchise and was followed by sequels and ports for subsequent Nintendo consoles. (Full article...)
The Apennine Colossus is a stone statue, approximately 11 metres (36 feet) tall, in the estate of Villa Demidoff (originally Villa di Pratolino) in Vaglia in Tuscany, Italy. A personification of the Apennine Mountains, the colossal figure was created by Giambologna, a Flemish-born Italian sculptor, in the late 1580s. The statue has the appearance of an elderly man crouched at the shore of a lake, squeezing the head of a sea monster through whose open mouth water originally emanated into the pond in front of the statue. The colossus is depicted naked, with stalactites in the thick beard and long hair to show the metamorphosis of man and mountain, blending his body with the surrounding nature. It is made of stone and plaster and the interior houses a series of chambers and caves on three levels. Initially, the back of the statue was protected by a structure resembling a cave, which was demolished around 1690 by the sculptor Giovanni Battista Foggini, who built a statue of a dragon to adorn the back of the colossus. The Italian sculptor Rinaldo Barbetti renovated the statue in 1876.
1956 – At the Polish embassy in Moscow, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev said "We will bury you" while addressing Western envoys, prompting them to leave the room.
1999 – Texas A&M University's Aggie Bonfirecollapsed(aftermath pictured), killing 12 people and injuring 27 others, and causing the university to officially declare a hiatus on the 90-year-old annual event.
2014 – Two Palestinian men attacked the praying congregants of a synagogue in Jerusalem with axes, knives, and a gun, resulting in eight deaths, including the attackers themselves.