Wikipedia:April Fool's Main Page/2005

Today's featured article

The Nintendo Entertainment System is an 8-bit video game console released by Nintendo in North America, Europe and Australia. The most successful gaming console of its time, it helped revitalize the video game industry following the video game crash of 1983, and set the standard for subsequent consoles in everything from game design (the first modern platform game, Super Mario Bros., was the system's first "killer app") to business practices. The NES was the first console developer to openly court third-party developers. So dominant was the NES during its heyday—roughly 1985 through 1991—that the period has become colloquially known as the "Nintendo era." As the 1990s dawned, however, renewed competition from technologically superior systems such as the 16-bit Sega Mega Drive (also known as the Sega Genesis) marked the end of the NES's dominance. Eclipsed by Nintendo's own Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES), the NES's user base gradually waned and in 1995 Nintendo officially discontinued the NES.

Recently featured: Bicycle – George Fox – The Supremes

Selected anniversaries

April 1: April Fool's Day

Recent days: March 31 – March 30 – March 29

In the news

• Pope John Paul II (pictured) is on the verge of death as a result of his recent health problems.
• The UN-backed Millennium Ecosystem Assessment releases a landmark study suggesting that planetary ecosystem changes are worsening.
• Terri Schiavo dies of dehydration, thirteen days after her feeding tube was removed, ending extended legal conflict over her life support.
• Prince Albert, Marquis of Baux, son of the ailing Prince Rainier III of Monaco, takes over the regency of the principality.

Did you know...

• ...that a bulbous bow can increase a ship's fuel efficiency by as much as 15%?
• ...that Jesus spelled backwards sounds a bit like sausage?
• ...that the Sedlec Ossuary is a chapel decorated with the bones of 40,000 people?
• ...that A Year in the Merde by Stephen Clarke is a humorous look at the tense Franco-British relations during the time of the 2003 invasion of Iraq?