Wikipedia:Main Page history/2019 April 9

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Artist's impression

Planet Nine is a hypothetical planet in the outer region of the Solar System. Its gravitational effects could explain the unlikely clustering of orbits for a group of extreme trans-Neptunian objects, bodies with average distances from the Sun that are more than 250 times that of Earth. These objects tend to make their closest approaches to the Sun in one sector, and their orbits are similarly tilted. Their improbable alignments suggest that an undiscovered planet may be shepherding the orbits of the most distant known Solar System objects. Planet Nine would have a predicted mass five to ten times that of Earth, and an elongated orbit extending 400 to 800 times as far from the Sun as the Earth's. It may have been ejected from its original orbit by Jupiter during the genesis of the Solar System, wrested from another star, captured as a rogue planet, or pulled into an eccentric orbit by a passing star. (Full article...)

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Did you know...

Pearl Doles Bell

... that American novelist Pearl Doles Bell (pictured) traveled with the Ringling Brothers Circus for six weeks to research her 1919 novel Her Elephant Man: A Story of the Sawdust Ring?
... that while the fan palm Coccothrinax jamaicensis is the only Coccothrinax species native to Jamaica, the neighbouring island of Cuba has 39 native species?
... that photographer Nydia Blas has said she is intrigued by the use of photography to influence public opinion, for example the use of photographs by anti-lynching activists?
... that by winning promotion during the 1920–21 season, Cardiff City F.C. became the first Welsh club to reach the top tier of English football?
... that according to research led by Dana Lepofsky, some clam gardens on the Pacific Northwest Coast are up to 3,500 years old?
... that the All India Azad Muslim Conference represented several Islamic organisations that opposed the partition of India?
... that Finnish Ice Hockey Association president Harry Lindblad was a founding member of the Finnish Hockey Hall of Fame, and served as its first chairman?
... that drug users doing the Florida shuffle move between multiple rehab centers so that each center may bill the user's insurance company as much as $40,000?

In the news

Cambridge win the 2019 women's Boat Race

In rowing, Cambridge win both the women's and men's Boat Races (women's crew pictured).
In Iran, widespread flooding since late March kills at least 70 people.
Zuzana Čaputová is elected president of Slovakia, becoming the country's first female president and its youngest.
A Special Counsel investigation, headed by Robert Mueller, concludes and reports its findings to the United States Attorney General.

On this day

April 9: Vimy Ridge Day in Canada; Day of National Unity in Georgia (1989)

The Mercury Seven

1866 – The Civil Rights Act of 1866, the United States' first federal law to affirm that all citizens are equally protected by the law, was enacted.
1917 – First World War: The Canadian Corps began the first wave of attacks at the Battle of Vimy Ridge in Vimy, France.
1942 – World War II: Japanese forces defeated Allied troops at the Battle of Bataan on the Bataan Peninsula in the Philippines before beginning to forcibly transfer more than 90,000 prisoners of war to prison camps in the Bataan Death March.
1959 – NASA announced the selection of the Mercury Seven (pictured), the first astronauts in Project Mercury.
1999 – President of Niger Ibrahim Baré Maïnassara was shot dead by soldiers in Niamey.

François Rabelais (d. 1553) · Charles Proteus Steinmetz (b. 1865) · Natascha Engel (b. 1967)

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Today's featured picture

Oath of the Horatii is a large painting by the French artist Jacques-Louis David painted in 1784. It depicts a scene from a Roman legend about a seventh-century BC dispute between two warring cities, Rome and Alba Longa. Instead of the two cities sending their armies to war, they agree to choose three men from each city; the victor in that fight will be the victorious city. From Rome, three brothers from a Roman family, the Horatii, agree to end the war by fighting three brothers from a family of Alba Longa, the Curiatii. The three brothers, all of whom appear willing to sacrifice their lives for the good of Rome, are shown saluting their father, who holds their swords out for them. The principal sources for the story behind David's Oath are the first book of Livy, as elaborated by Dionysius of Halicarnassus. However, the moment depicted in David's painting is his own invention. The painting led to the popularization of the Roman salute and also increased David's fame, allowing him to take on his own students. It is now in the Louvre in Paris.

Painting: Jacques-Louis David

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