Wikipedia:Main Page history/2018 August 12

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From today's featured article

Banksia telmatiaea, the swamp fox banksia, is a shrub that grows in marshes and swamps along the lower west coast of Australia. It is an upright bush up to 2 m (7 ft) tall, with narrow leaves and a pale brown flower spike, which can produce profuse quantities of nectar. The leaves have a green upper surface and white hairy undersurface. First collected in the 1840s, it was not published as a separate species until 1981; as with several other similar species it was previously included in B. sphaerocarpa (fox banksia). The shrub grows amongst scrubland in seasonally wet lowland areas of the coastal sandplain between Badgingarra and Serpentine in Western Australia. Reports suggest that it is pollinated by a variety of birds and small mammals, but not much is known of the ecology or conservation biology of this little-studied species. Like many members of the series Abietinae, it has not been considered to have much horticultural potential and is rarely cultivated. (Full article...)

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Zheng Pingru

... that Chinese spy Zheng Pingru (pictured), who was executed after an assassination attempt on a Japanese collaborator, is believed to have inspired the novella Lust, Caution, and its film adaptation?
... that Wood-Tikchik State Park, the largest state park in the United States, is sometimes staffed by a single ranger?
... that Grace Macurdy shaped the field of classics by pulling together both material and textual evidence as sources in her studies of individual women?
... that the flowers of the Redelinghuys pincushion are pollinated by rodents?
... that Chip Rives was one of the eight people named Sports Illustrated Sportsperson of the Year in 1987?
... that the Church of Saint Jacob in Nisibis in southeastern Turkey was originally the baptistery of a Syriac Orthodox cathedral which no longer exists?
... that Michael Martin, project director of the recently completed £1.4 billion Queensferry Crossing, was inspired to study engineering through reading back issues of New Civil Engineer?
... that according to some accounts, the legendary Georgian hunting dog Q'ursha had eagle's wings, a thunderous bark and a gigantic leap?

In the news

Student protests in Dhaka, Bangladesh

In the Saudi Arabian-led intervention in Yemen, Saudi armed forces bomb a school bus in Dahyan, killing at least 50 people, including 29 children.
Saudi Arabia expels the Canadian ambassador after receiving criticism of its treatment of rights activists.
A 6.9 magnitude earthquake strikes Lombok, Indonesia, killing more than 380 people after its 6.4 magnitude foreshock killed at least 20 others a week prior.
More than 140 people are injured in road-safety protests (pictured) in Bangladesh.

On this day

August 12

A quagga in London Zoo

1099 – The First Crusade concluded with the Battle of Ascalon and Fatimid forces under Al-Afdal Shahanshah retreating to Egypt.
1883 – The last known quagga (example pictured), a subspecies of the plains zebra, died at the Natura Artis Magistra zoo in Amsterdam.
1914 – World War I: Despite the Belgian victory in the Battle of Halen, they were ultimately unable to stop the German invasion of Belgium.
1948 – About 600 unarmed Pashtuns in the North-West Frontier Province of Pakistan, protesting the arrests of the leaders of the Khudai Khidmatgar movement, were massacred by police and militia forces.
1990 – American paleontologist Sue Hendrickson found the most complete skeleton of a Tyrannosaurus rex ever discovered near Faith, South Dakota, U.S.

Abraham Zacuto (b. 1452) · Lord Castlereagh (d. 1822) · George Soros (b. 1930)

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Cigaritis cilissa foraging at Mount Meron, Israel.

Photograph: Gideon Pisanty

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