Wikipedia:Main Page history/2016 October 24

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From today's featured article

"Subway" is the seventh episode of the sixth season of the American police television drama Homicide: Life on the Street, and the 84th episode overall. It first aired on NBC in the United States on December 5, 1997. In the episode, John Lange (Vincent D'Onofrio) becomes pinned between a subway train and the station platform. The Baltimore homicide department is informed that Lange will be dead within an hour, and Pembleton tries to determine if the case is a homicide while comforting Lange in his final minutes. "Subway" received overwhelmingly positive reviews but ranked number three in its time-slot during its original broadcast, capturing 10.3 million viewers but falling behind ABC's 20/20 and CBS's Nash Bridges. The episode won a Peabody Award for excellence in television broadcasting and was nominated for two Emmy Awards, one for Yoshimura's script and one for D'Onofrio's guest performance. Vince Gilligan, an X-Files screenwriter, said that "Subway" directly influenced an episode he wrote that featured Bryan Cranston, and Cranston's performance led to his casting in Gilligan's series Breaking Bad. (Full article...)

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Did you know...

Reads Landing School

... that Reads Landing School (pictured) features a brick water table?
... that after Joan Risch's apparent abduction from her home 55 years ago today, it was discovered she had borrowed books on missing-person cases from the local library?
... that the Nursing Studies Unit at the University of Edinburgh was the first such department in a British university?
... that the 1955 Tamil language film Doctor Savithri is a contemporary adaptation of the story of Savitri and Satyavan?
... that the parish of St Silin's contains a part of England under the jurisdiction of the Church in Wales?
... that scholar Frederick Sherwood Dunn led a move that was described by a university president as "Yale fumbled and Princeton recovered the ball"?
... that argon oxide, an argon compound, interferes with the detection of iron-56 in inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry?
... that James M. Turner was removed from the New Jersey Senate after being convicted of trying to frame his political rival Kenneth A. Gewertz by having 6,500 amphetamine-like tablets planted in his home?

In the news

Model of the Schiaparelli lander

At least 70 people are killed and around 600 others injured in a train derailment in Cameroon.
Numerous media outlets, social networks, and retailers go offline in parts of North America and Europe during a large-scale denial-of-service cyberattack.
The ESA–Roscosmos ExoMars mission's Trace Gas Orbiter enters orbit around Mars, but contact is lost with the Schiaparelli lander (model pictured) during its descent to the planet's surface.
Iraqi government forces, allied militias, peshmerga, and the CJTF-OIR launch an offensive to retake the city of Mosul from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.

On this day...

October 24: United Nations Day (1945); Independence Day in Zambia (1964)

United Nations Secretariat Building

1260 – Qutuz, Mamluk sultan of Egypt, was assassinated by a fellow Mamluk leader, Baibars, who then seized power for himself.
1795 – As a result of the Third Partition of Poland, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth ceased to exist as an independent state as its territory was divided between Austria, Prussia, and Russia.
1912 – First Balkan War: Serbian forces defeated the Ottoman army at the Battle of Kumanovo in Vardar Macedonia.
1949 – The cornerstone of the United Nations Headquarters building (pictured) in New York City was laid.
2007 – Chang'e 1, the first satellite in the Chinese Lunar Exploration Program, was launched from Xichang Satellite Launch Center.

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From today's featured list

Hurricane Agnes

The 1972 Atlantic hurricane season is one of five Atlantic hurricane seasons not to have any major hurricanes. During the season, seven tropical or subtropical depressions formed, all of which became tropical or subtropical storms or hurricanes. The season officially began on June 1, 1972 and ended on November 30. The first storm of the season, Subtropical Storm Alpha, formed on May 23, before the season began. The final storm of the season, Subtropical Storm Delta, dissipated on November 7. Of the seven tropical cyclones, three were subtropical storms, and four were tropical. Three became hurricanes; none of these reached Category 3 intensity or higher on the Saffir–Simpson hurricane scale. Although it was an inactive season, 1972 brought one of the deadliest and most expensive hurricanes to strike the United States, Hurricane Agnes (pictured). Agnes was a weak but large storm that made landfall at the Florida panhandle and then followed the east coast northward. It killed 122 people and caused $2.1 billion (1972 dollars) in damage, mostly due to flooding in Pennsylvania and New York. (Full list...)

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Dendrogramma is a monotypic genus of siphonophore identified in 2014 from a collection of specimens gathered in 1986. Although specimens were at first identified as two species, D. enigmatica and D. discoides, these were later shown to represent varieties of a single species. When Dendrogramma was first discovered, it was speculated that the genus could not be classified into any existing phylum. However, examination of RNA material identified it as a siphonophore in 2016. The specimens are presumed to represent parts (bracts) of a larger organism whose entire morphology is unknown.

This diagram, depicting the holotype, was included in the article which first described Dendrogramma.

Photograph: Jean Just, Reinhardt Møbjerg Kristensen, and Jørgen Olesen

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