Wikipedia:Main Page history/2014 June 2

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From today's featured article

Cover of the official guidebook for the 1906 season

Belle Vue Zoological Gardens was a large zoo, amusement park, exhibition hall complex and speedway stadium in Belle Vue, Manchester, England, opened in 1836. The brainchild of John Jennison, the park was intended to entertain the genteel middle classes, with formal gardens and dancing on open-air platforms during the summer, but they soon became one of the most popular attractions in Northern England. Jennison set out a small amusements area in Belle Vue during the 1870s, which was expanded in the early 20th century to become what was advertised as the "showground of the world". Popular rides included the 60 mph (97 km/h) Bobs roller coaster and the Scenic Railway. Grand firework displays were given from 1852 and there was an annual Christmas circus from 1922. The Kings Hall, opened in 1910, housed the Hallé Orchestra for several years and later hosted concerts by artists such as Jimi Hendrix, The Who, The Rolling Stones, Leonard Cohen, Johnny Cash and Led Zeppelin. At its peak Belle Vue occupied 165 acres (0.67 km²) and attracted more than two million visitors a year. The zoo closed in September 1977 after its owners decided they could no longer afford annual losses of £100,000. (Full article...)

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Did you know...

From Wikipedia's new and recently improved content:

... that a 1650-year-old bottle of wine (pictured) found in Germany has been called the world's "oldest existing bottle of wine"?
... that the Kizlar Agha, the chief black eunuch of the Ottoman Sultans' harem, ranked third in the state hierarchy after the Grand Vizier and the Shaykh al-Islām?
... that cricketing lawyer Arthur Coleridge, great-nephew of the poet, organised the first full performance of Bach's Mass in B minor in England?
... that Rahul Shewale recently won the Mumbai seat in the Parliament of India by a margin of 138,000 votes?
... that twelve years later, GamesRadar called the 1997 Mischief Makers "possibly the most underrated and widely ignored game on the N64"?
... that Matthaios Kofidis, former member of the Ottoman parliament, was among the Greek notables hanged in Amasya by the Turkish National Movement?
... that many Alaska legislators wear kuspuks to work on Fridays?

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In the news

Peter Mutharika is elected President of Malawi.
Abdel Fattah el-Sisi (pictured) is elected President of Egypt.
Ignatius Aphrem II is enthroned as the Syriac Orthodox Patriarch of Antioch.
American author and civil rights activist Maya Angelou dies at the age of 86.
Petro Poroshenko is elected President of Ukraine.
In motorsport, Ryan Hunter-Reay wins the Indianapolis 500.
The EU election concludes with the European People's Party group maintaining its plurality of seats in the European Parliament.

Ongoing: Ukrainian conflict – Balkan flooding
Recent deaths: Wojciech Jaruzelski

On this day...

June 2: Duanwu/Dragon Boat Festival (Chinese calendar, 2014); Queen's Official Birthday in New Zealand (2014); Western Australia Day (2014)

1098 – First Crusade: The first Siege of Antioch ended as Crusader forces captured the city, but the Seljuk Turks would later start a second siege of Antioch a few days later.
1805 – Napoleonic Wars: A Franco-Spanish fleet recaptured Diamond Rock (pictured), an uninhabited island at the entrance to the bay leading to Fort-de-France, from the British.
1919 – First Red Scare: Anarchist followers of Luigi Galleani set off eight bombs in eight cities across the United States.
1967 – German university student Benno Ohnesorg was killed during a protest in West Berlin against the visit of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Shah of Iran, sparking the formation of the militant group 2 June Movement.
1994 – The Royal Air Force suffered its worst peacetime disaster when a Chinook helicopter crashed on the Mull of Kintyre, Scotland, killing all 29 people on board.

More anniversaries: June 1 – June 2 – June 3

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From today's featured list

The 1987 Major League Baseball (MLB) Draft took place as a conference call to the Commissioner of Baseball's office in New York from June 2–4. The American League (AL) and the National League (NL) alternated picks throughout the first round; because an NL team drafted first in the 1986 MLB Draft, an AL team had the first selection in 1987. Finishing 67–95, the Seattle Mariners had the worst record in the AL and thus obtained the first overall selection. The second selection went to the Pittsburgh Pirates. With the first overall pick, the Mariners drafted Ken Griffey, Jr.; Griffey, Jr. became a 13-time All-Star and helped Seattle make its first postseason appearance in franchise history. Mark Merchant, the second overall pick, however, never played in a major league game. The total number of athletes selected, 1,263, broke a record for the most players ever chosen in a draft. As of 2013, no players from the draft have been elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame, though several players made the honorary MLB All-Star Game in their careers. (Full list...)

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Today's featured picture

A nest of the tropical Asian giant honey bee, which consists of a single exposed honeycomb, an array of densely packed hexagonal cells made of beeswax. Honeycombs store food (honey and pollen) and house the "brood" (eggs, larvae, and pupae).

Photograph: Muhammad Mahdi Karim

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