Wikipedia:Main Page history/2014 January 16

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From today's featured article

Steamtown, U.S.A. was a steam locomotive museum that ran steam excursions out of North Walpole, New Hampshire, and Bellows Falls, Vermont, from the 1960s to 1983. The museum was founded by millionaire seafood industrialist F. Nelson Blount and was operated by the Steamtown Foundation after his death in 1967. Due to Vermont's air quality regulations restricting steam excursions, declining visitor attendance, and track use disputes, some of the collection was relocated to Scranton, Pennsylvania, in the mid-1980s and the rest was sold. Steamtown, U.S.A. failed to attract the expected 200,000–400,000 visitors in Scranton and, facing bankruptcy, it sold more of the collection. In 1986, the U.S. House of Representatives approved funding to begin the process of making it a National Historic Site. Historical research was carried out by the National Park Service (NPS) on the remaining equipment. By 1995, Steamtown had been acquired and developed by the NPS as the Steamtown National Historic Site with a $66 million allocation. Several more pieces have been removed from the collection as a result of the government acquisition. Part of the Blount collection is still on display in Scranton. (Full article...)

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... that Elsa the Snow Queen, a protagonist in Walt Disney's Frozen, was originally written as a villain?

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In the news

Cristiano Ronaldo playing for Portugal in a match against Croatia in June 2013

During heavy fighting over Malakal, South Sudan, a Nile ferry carrying refugees sinks, drowning more than 200 people.
In association football, Cristiano Ronaldo (pictured) wins the FIFA Ballon d'Or and Nadine Angerer wins the Women's World Player of the Year award.
Israeli politician and general Ariel Sharon dies after being in a permanent vegetative state for eight years.
Amid civil conflict, Michel Djotodia resigns as President of the Central African Republic.
Archaeologists identify the tomb of Egyptian pharaoh Sobekhotep I.
The United States Senate confirms Janet Yellen as the Federal Reserve System's first female chairman.

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On this day...

January 16: Tu Bishvat (Judaism, 2014)

1780 – American Revolutionary War: The British Royal Navy gained their first major naval victory over their European enemies in the war when they defeated a Spanish squadron in the Battle of Cape St. Vincent (pictured).
1862 – The beam of a pumping engine broke at the Hartley Colliery in Northumberland, England, and fell down the shaft trapping the men below, resulting in the deaths of 204 men.
1920 – The League of Nations, the first intergovernmental organisation whose principal mission was to maintain world peace, held its first council meeting in Paris.
1942 – TWA Flight 3 crashed into Potosi Mountain in Nevada, killing actress Carole Lombard and all of the other 21 people on board.
1964 – The musical Hello, Dolly! opened at the St. James Theatre on Broadway, and would go on to win ten Tony Awards, a record that stood for 35 years.

More anniversaries: January 15 – January 16 – January 17

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Today's featured picture

Stained glass windows by Jean-Baptiste Capronnier

Three scenes of the legend of the Miraculous Sacrament in stained glass windows in the Cathédrale of Saints-Michel-et-Gudule, Brussels, by Jean-Baptiste Capronnier (c. 1870). The contributions of Capronnier (1814–1891) helped lead to a revival in glass painting.

Windows: Jean-Baptiste Capronnier; photograph: Joaquim Alves Gaspar

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