Wikipedia:Main Page history/2015 August 18

From today's featured article

Ruby Laffoon (1869–1941) was an American politician and the 43rd governor of Kentucky, from 1931 to 1935. At age 17, Laffoon moved to Washington, D.C. to live with his uncle, U.S. Representative Polk Laffoon. In 1931, he defeated Republican William B. Harrison by what was then the largest margin of victory ever in a Kentucky gubernatorial election. To make up for a revenue shortfall during the Great Depression, Laffoon advocated the enactment of the state's first sales tax. This issue dominated most of his term in office and split the state Democratic Party and his own administration; the tax was defeated three times before he forged a bipartisan alliance to get it passed in a special legislative session in 1934. Term-limited by the state constitution, Laffoon supported political boss Tom Rhea to succeed him as governor, but Rhea was beaten by Lieutenant Governor Happy Chandler in the primary. Laffoon appointed a record number of Kentucky colonels, including Harland Sanders, who used the title "Colonel" when he opened his chain of Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurants. (Full article...)

Hopkins County Courthouse

... that Hopkins County Courthouse (pictured) features an unusual double-helix staircase, a clock-less tower, and entrances that are located on its corners?
... that five songs sung by Thea Austin charted in the Top 40 of singles charts around the world?
... that in 1971, Charles Winick found that American prostitutes earned little more than clerical workers?
... that decompression tanks belonging to Ben McDaniel found following his disappearance five years ago today at Florida's Vortex Spring contained only air, not the gas mix used by cave divers?
... that Grain Wing Battery and Dummy Battery were constructed to support Grain Fort in defending the River Medway?
... that at age 16, Ivan Toney became the youngest player to represent Northampton Town Football Club?
... that the Regency romance novel Lord of Scoundrels is a retelling of the fairytale Beauty and the Beast?
... that Emily Kieliszewski won the 2015 Miss Michigan pageant by tap dancing to "U Can't Touch This" by MC Hammer?

Pentagon tiling

A bomb explosion in Bangkok, Thailand, kills at least 21 people and injures more than 100 others.
Trigana Air Service Flight 257 crashes in Papua, Indonesia, killing all 54 passengers and crew on board.
Mathematicians at the University of Washington Bothell discover a new type of pentagon tiling (pictured), the first new way to "tile the plane" with a single polygon since 1985.
A truck bomb attack at a market in Baghdad kills at least 80 people and injures more than 200 others.
Multiple explosions in Tianjin, China, kill more than 100 people and injure at least 700.

August 18: Long Tan Day in Australia (1966)

1590 – On the third birthday of his granddaughter Virginia Dare, the first English child born in the Americas, John White, governor of the Roanoke Colony in present-day North Carolina, US, returned from England only to find the settlement deserted.
1612 – The trials of the Pendle and Samlesbury witches, among the most famous of England's witch trials, began at the assizes in Lancaster.
1868 – Astronomer Pierre Janssen discovered helium while analyzing the chromosphere of the sun during a total solar eclipse in Guntur, India.
1920 – The Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution (authors Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony pictured) was ratified, guaranteeing women's suffrage in America.
1976 – North Korean soldiers killed two American soldiers in the Joint Security Area of the Korean Demilitarized Zone, heightening tensions over a 100-foot (30 m) poplar tree that blocked the line of sight between a United Nations Command checkpoint and an observation post.

Joshua Tree National Park is a U.S. National Park in southeastern California named for the Joshua trees (Yucca brevifolia) native to the park. Created in 1994 when the U.S. Congress passed the California Desert Protection Act, the park covers a land area of 790,636 acres (1,235.37 sq mi; 3,199.59 km²). The park includes parts of two deserts, the Mojave and Colorado, as well as the Little San Bernardino Mountains.

Photograph: Tuxyso

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