Wikipedia:Main Page history/2019 September 7

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From today's featured article

George Hirst (7 September 1871 – 10 May 1954) was a professional English cricketer who played first-class cricket for Yorkshire, mainly between 1891 and 1921. He played in 24 Test matches for England, touring Australia twice. He was a left arm medium-fast bowler and right-handed batsman who completed the double of 1,000 runs and 100 wickets in a season 14 times. He recorded 36,356 runs and 2,742 wickets taken in first-class cricket and 790 runs and 59 wickets in Tests. Hirst was regarded as a specialist batsman until around 1900, when he learned to make the ball swing in flight, making his bowling difficult to counter. He scored 341 runs in an innings against Leicestershire in 1905, and made a unique double of 2,000 runs and 200 wickets in 1906. He played in all England's home Test series between 1899 and 1909, although less successfully than for his county. He played occasionally for Yorkshire after the war, retiring to coach at Eton, while also training youths from other social backgrounds. (Full article...)

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Samragyee RL Shah

... that Samragyee RL Shah (pictured) is the highest-paid actress in Nepali cinema as of 2019?
... that the melody of the Christian hymn "Ich steh vor dir mit leeren Händen, Herr" is written without bar lines, reflecting the singer's insecurity and questions?
... that in Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege, the player character Caveira's "Silent Step" ability featured a game-breaking bug?
... that the polluted Roberts Landing on San Francisco Bay, California, was cleaned up to create a housing development and a marsh, now home to the endangered salt marsh harvest mouse?
... that the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh suspended a bylaw to enable Thomas Chavasse to apply for a surgeon's post?
... that eight years to the day after it first signed on, WVOB radio in Bel Air, Maryland, lost its tower when a construction worker clipped the tower's guy wires?
... that with 20 goals, Hassan Maatouk is the Lebanon national football team's joint top-scorer?
... that James Blake took inspiration from the 1967 film Barefoot in the Park for his song of the same name, despite never having watched it?

In the news

Robert Mugabe

Former Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe (pictured) dies at the age of 95.
A fire aboard a charter boat near Santa Cruz Island in California leaves at least thirty-three people dead and one other missing.
Hurricane Dorian makes landfall in the Bahamas as a Category 5 hurricane, killing at least 30 people and leaving hundreds of others missing.
Brazil's National Institute for Space Research announces that it has detected more than 80,000 wildfires in the country since January, at least 40,000 of which have occurred in the Amazon rainforest.

On this day

September 7

Prise de la Dominique,
engraving by François Godefroy

1191 – Third Crusade: Forces under Richard I of England defeated Ayyubid troops under Saladin in Arsuf, present-day Israel.
1778 – Anglo-French War: France invaded the island of Dominica (depicted) and captured its British fort before the latter even knew that France had allied with the United States.
1901 – With Beijing occupied by foreign troops from the Eight-Nation Alliance, Qing China was forced to sign the Boxer Protocol, an unequal treaty ending the Boxer Rebellion.
1999 – Three weeks after an earthquake struck northwestern Turkey, a second earthquake struck Athens, causing Greece and Turkey to initiate "earthquake diplomacy".
2004 – Hurricane Ivan made landfall on Grenada and devastated at least 85 percent of buildings on the island.

Johan Ludvig Holstein (b. 1694) · William Burnet (d. 1729) · Paul Brown (b. 1908)

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Today's featured picture

The Cuban peso is one of two official currencies in use in Cuba, the other being the convertible peso. Most Cuban state workers receive their wages in national pesos, but some receive a portion of their salary in convertible pesos. Shops that sell basic necessities, such as groceries, generally accept only national pesos, whereas convertible pesos are much more commonplace in "dollar shops", which sell non-essential commodities and goods. The word "peso" may refer to either currency.

This picture shows a five-peso coin, dated 1915, containing on average 8.3592 grams (0.29486 oz) of gold (.900 fine), depicting José Martí on the obverse and the coat of arms of Cuba on the reverse. The coin was engraved by Chief Engraver of the United States Mint Charles E. Barber and struck at the Philadelphia Mint.

Coin credit: Charles E. Barber and the Philadelphia Mint; photographed by the National Numismatic Collection

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