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From today's featured article

The 2005 Sugar Bowl was an American college football bowl game between the Virginia Tech Hokies and the Auburn Tigers at the Louisiana Superdome in New Orleans, Louisiana, on January 3, 2005. Virginia Tech represented the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) after winning the ACC football championship. Auburn represented the Southeastern Conference (SEC), finishing the regular season undefeated. Pre-game media coverage of the game focused on Auburn being left out of the Bowl Championship Series national championship game because of its lower ranking in the BCS poll, a point of controversy for Auburn fans and others. For Auburn, running backs Carnell Williams (pictured) and Ronnie Brown were considered among the best at their position; for Tech, senior quarterback Bryan Randall had had a record-breaking season. Both teams also had high-ranked defenses and in a defensive struggle, Auburn earned a 16–13 victory despite a late-game rally by Virginia Tech. In recognition of his game-winning performance, Auburn quarterback Jason Campbell was named the game's most valuable player. Several players from each team were selected in the 2005 NFL Draft and went on to careers in the National Football League. (Full article...)

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From Wikipedia's newest content:

... that Kirkpatrick Chapel (pictured) at Rutgers University, built in 1873, was designed by architect Henry Janeway Hardenbergh, and features four stained-glass windows from the studios of Louis Comfort Tiffany?
... that Arthur Fields took over 180,000 photographs of Dublin pedestrians?
... that according to the 1871 census, the first in British India, Tiruchirappalli had a population of 76,530 making it the second largest city in Madras Presidency, next only to Madras?
... that Daft Punk's "Doin' It Right", featuring Panda Bear of the Animal Collective, was considered by both Pitchfork Media and Paperblog to be the best track out of their fourth album Random Access Memories?
... that the sister of Natchez warchief Tattooed Serpent said that he was like a Frenchman?
... that 17th-century churches in Germany, Austria and Switzerland spent significant amounts of money decorating the corpses of unknown Christians so that they could be worshipped as saints?

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In the news

The four adult defendants in the 2012 Delhi gang rape case are sentenced to death.
NASA confirms Voyager 1 (pictured) became the first man-made object to reach interstellar space in August 2012.
More than one million Catalans form a human chain in support of the independence of Catalonia.
At least 43 people are killed in Hindu–Muslim clashes in Muzaffarnagar, India.
The 125th session of the International Olympic Committee awards the 2020 Summer Olympics to Tokyo and elects Thomas Bach as IOC president.

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On this day...

September 15: International Day of Democracy; Independence Day in Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Nicaragua (1821); Battle of Britain Day in the United Kingdom

1440 – French knight Gilles de Rais, one of the earliest known serial killers, was taken into custody upon an accusation brought against him by the Bishop of Nantes.
1831 – The John Bull (pictured), the oldest operable steam locomotive in the world, ran for the first time in New Jersey on the Camden and Amboy Railroad.
1916 – Tanks, the "secret weapons" of the British Army during the First World War, were first used in combat at the Battle of the Somme in Somme, Picardy, France, leading to strategic Allied victory.
1944 – American and Australian forces landed on the Japanese-occupied island of Morotai, starting the Battle of Morotai.
1963 – A bomb planted by members of the Ku Klux Klan exploded in the 16th Street Baptist Church, an African American Baptist church in Birmingham, Alabama, US, killing four children and injuring at least 22 others.

More anniversaries: September 14 – September 15 – September 16

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Today's featured picture

The bashi-bazouk were irregular soldiers of the Ottoman army who could originate from any part of the empire. Known for such a lack of discipline that they were sometimes forcibly disarmed and worked for plunder, they were formally abandoned by the end of the 19th century.

This painting by Jean-Léon Gérôme, now held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, was produced after he visited Asia Minor in 1868. According to the museum, "Gérôme's virtuosic treatment of textures provides a sumptuous counterpoint to the figure’s dignified bearing".

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