Wikipedia:Main Page history/2015 May 24

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Hurricane Lenny was the second-strongest November Atlantic hurricane on record and the record-breaking fifth Category 4 hurricane in the 1999 Atlantic hurricane season. It formed on November 13 in the western Caribbean Sea and maintained an unprecedented west-to-east track for its entire duration. It attained hurricane status south of Jamaica and passed south of Hispaniola and Puerto Rico, attaining peak winds of 155 mph (250 km/h) about 21 mi (34 km) south of Saint Croix in the US Virgin Islands. It gradually weakened while moving through the Leeward Islands, dissipating on November 23 over the open Atlantic Ocean. Damage in the US territories totaled about $330 million, with widespread flooding and erosion in Saint Croix. Lenny killed two people in northern Colombia, three in Saint Martin and one in Antigua and Barbuda, where it also contaminated the local water supply. Significant storm damage occurred as far south as Grenada, where high surf isolated towns from the capital city. (Full article...)

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From Wikipedia's new and recently improved content:

... that most outbreaks of the African migratory locust (pictured) start on the floodplains of the Niger River?
... that I Am Wrath was put on ice for two years and began filming in March 2015 with a new lead actor and new director?
... that William G. Whittaker wrote Gebrauchsmusik?
... that near its source, the gradient of Lindy Creek is about ten times steeper than in its lower reaches?
... that one critic felt there was a "perfectly pitched" joke about selfies in "The Trial of Elizabeth Gadge", an episode of Inside No. 9 about a 17th-century witch trial?
... that for its first 25 years of existence in Michigan, US Highway 33 did not have an independent routing?
... that at least 39 different organisms inhabit the the lower reproductive tract of women?
... that Arnold Schönberg arranged Bach's chorale partita on Luther's hymn for Pentecost "Komm, Gott Schöpfer, Heiliger Geist", a paraphrase of "Veni Creator Spiritus"?
... that Nina Starr Braunwald designed, fabricated and implanted the first successful artificial mitral heart valve replacement in a human?

In the news

Ireland becomes the first country in the world to legalise same-sex marriage by constitutional referendum.
Five banks charged with manipulating foreign exchange rates plead guilty and agree to fines totaling over US$5.7 billion.
The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant captures the strategic city of Ramadi, Iraq, and the historic city of Palmyra, Syria.
A landslide in Salgar, Colombia, kills more than 75 people.
In association football, FC Barcelona (head coach Luis Enrique pictured) win La Liga.
Aruna Shanbaug, a rape victim whose case sparked debate on euthanasia in India, dies after 42 years in a persistent vegetative state.

Ongoing events:
- Saudi Arabian-led intervention in Yemen
Recent deaths:
- Dean Potter

On this day...

May 24: Pentecost (Western Christianity, 2015); Independence Day in Eritrea (1993)

1689 – The Act of Toleration became law in England, granting freedom of worship to Nonconformists under certain circumstances, but deliberately excluding Catholics.
1830 – The nursery rhyme "Mary Had a Little Lamb" was first published as an original poem by Sarah Josepha Hale.
1913 – Princess Victoria Louise of Prussia (pictured) married Prince Ernest Augustus of Hanover, one of the last great social events of European royalty before World War I began fourteen months later.
1963 – United States Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy met with African American author James Baldwin in an unsuccessful attempt to improve race relations.
1970 – On the Kola Peninsula in Russia, drilling began on the Kola Superdeep Borehole, eventually reaching 12,262 metres (40,230 ft), making it the deepest hole ever drilled and the deepest artificial point on the earth.

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Cendrillon is an opera in four acts by Jules Massenet to a French libretto by Henri Caïn. Based on Charles Perrault's 1698 version of the Cinderella fairy tale, it follows a young woman who meets and falls in love with a prince owing to help from her fairy godmother. The opera has been performed numerous times since its 1899 premiere at the Salle Favart, and several recordings have been produced.

Poster: Émile Bertrand; restoration: Adam Cuerden

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