Wikipedia:Main Page history/2020 October 30

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From today's featured article

The European storm petrel (Hydrobates pelagicus) is a small, square-tailed seabird with a fluttering flight. It is black except for a white rump and a white band under its wings. Most birds breed on islands off western Europe, with a separate subspecies occurring in the Mediterranean. The storm petrel lays a single white egg in a burrow. The adults share incubation and feeding the chick. This bird is oceanic outside the breeding season, wintering off the western coasts of Africa. It feeds on small fish, and can find oily edible items by smell. The chick is fed with an oily liquid regurgitated by the adults. Silent at sea, the storm petrel has a chattering call given during courtship, and the male has a purring song. The storm petrel cannot survive where rats or cats have been introduced, and it is killed by large birds such as gulls. It is classified by the IUCN as being of least concern. Folklore claiming that the bird can foretell or cause bad weather has led to its use as a symbol by some revolutionary groups. (Full article...)

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Did you know ...

T-bone steak

... that it was illegal to sell a T-bone steak (example pictured) in Great Britain between 1997 and 1999?
... that Batman and the Joker parade down the street daily at Warner Bros. Movie World?
... that Rear Admiral Timothy S. Matthews received an award from the Association of Old Crows?
... that a conservation professor who appeared in Extinction: The Facts described it as "surprisingly radical" for a David Attenborough documentary?
... that Pope Francis's encyclical Fratelli tutti is the first to be signed outside Rome?
... that American composer Norma Wendelburg studied at the Mozarteum in Salzburg and the Vienna Academy of Music on two Fulbright scholarships?
... that 47 people, including bystanders and an amateur reporter, were arrested in Warsaw at a protest against the detention of LGBT activist Margot in August 2020?
... that a monumental plaque to Italian physician Giovanni Bianchi states: Nascitur infelix, vixit infelicior, obiit infelicissime (He was born unhappy, he lived more unhappy, he died maximally unhappy)?

In the news

COVID-19 pandemic: Disease; Virus; By location; Impact; Portal

Corey Seager

At least 41 people are killed and 81 others are missing after Typhoon Molave hits the Philippines and Vietnam.
In baseball, the Los Angeles Dodgers defeat the Tampa Bay Rays to win the World Series (MVP Corey Seager pictured).
In Australian rugby league, the Melbourne Storm defeat the Penrith Panthers to win the NRL Grand Final.
Wavel Ramkalawan becomes the first opposition candidate to be elected President of Seychelles since independence in 1976.

On this day

October 30: Mischief Night

French troops capturing Stettin

1806 – War of the Fourth Coalition: Believing that they were outnumbered, the German garrison at Stettin surrendered (depicted) to a much smaller French force without a fight.
1950 – Blanca Canales led the Jayuya Uprising against the U.S.-supported Puerto Rican government.
1960 – Michael Woodruff performed the first successful kidney transplant in the United Kingdom at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh.
1993 – The Troubles: Three members of the Ulster Defence Association opened fire in a crowded pub during a Halloween party, killing eight people and wounding nineteen others.

Giovanni Pietro Francesco Agius de Soldanis (b. 1712)
António Cabreira (b. 1868)
Jam Master Jay (d. 2002)

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From today's featured list

Cy Young

In Major League Baseball, the 300-win club is the group of pitchers who have won 300 or more games. Twenty-four pitchers have reached this milestone. The New York Gothams/Giants/San Francisco Giants are the only franchise to see three players reach the milestone while on their roster: those players are Mickey Welch, Christy Mathewson, and Randy Johnson. The first player to win 300 games was Pud Galvin in 1888. Seven pitchers recorded all or the majority of their career wins in the 19th century: Galvin, Cy Young (pictured), Kid Nichols, Tim Keefe, John Clarkson, Charles Radbourn, and Mickey Welch. Four more pitchers joined the club in the first quarter of the 20th century. Young is the all-time leader in wins with 511, a mark that is considered unbreakable. Since 1990, only four pitchers have joined the 300-win club: Roger Clemens, Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine, and Johnson. (Full list...)

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Today's featured picture

The brown hairstreak (Thecla betulae) is a butterfly in the family Lycaenidae, with a range spanning most of the Palearctic. It is difficult to observe, spending most of its time in groups in the tops of trees (often tall European ashes on the edge of woodland, known as "master trees"), where they feed on the honeydew of aphids. The females come down to lower levels to lay their eggs on blackthorn twigs, and can sometimes be seen feeding on nectar from flowers such as hemp-agrimony, common fleabane, yarrow and bramble. The species is on the wing in late summer and early autumn; the eggs overwinter and hatch in the spring when the blackthorn buds burst. This brown hairstreak was photographed in Rila National Park, Bulgaria.

Photograph credit: Charles J. Sharp

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