User:UKPhoenix79/Today in Wikipedia

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Today is June 11, 2008

[edit] Today's featured content

George I was King of Great Britain and Ireland, from 1 August 1714 until his death. At the age of 54, he ascended the British throne as the first monarch of the House of Hanover. Although many bore closer blood-relationships to the childless Queen Anne, the Act of Settlement 1701, which prohibits Catholics from inheriting the throne, designated her cousin, Sophia of Hanover, as heiress to the throne. Sophia was Anne's closest living Protestant relative but died a matter of weeks before Anne leaving the Protestant succession to her son, George. In reaction, the Jacobites attempted to depose George and replace him with Anne's Catholic half-brother, James Francis Edward Stuart, but their attempts failed. During George's reign in Britain, the powers of the monarchy diminished and the modern system of Cabinet government led by a Prime Minister underwent development. Towards the end of his reign, actual power was held by Sir Robert Walpole. George died on a trip to his native Hanover, where he was buried. (more...)

Recently featured: 2006 Atlantic hurricane season – Jurassic Park – Formation and evolution of the Solar System

[edit] Did you know?

From Wikipedia's newest articles:

• ... that the 5th-century Sassanian Emperor of Iran Yazdegerd I (pictured on coin) was given the epithets of Ramashtras ("the most quiet") as well as Al Khasha ("the harsh")?
• ... that Frank Lloyd Wright's textile block work, Storer House, was restored in the 1980s by Joel Silver, producer of the films Die Hard and The Matrix?
• ... that the 1992 Nicaragua earthquake was the first "tsunami earthquake" to be captured on modern broadband seismic networks?
• ... that Matthew Bruccoli, a scholar on F. Scott Fitzgerald, owned a collection of Fitzgerald memorabilia valued at US$2 million?
• ... that Roujin Z is a 1991 Japanese anime film about a computerized hospital bed with its own built-in atomic power reactor?
• ... that the Louisville and Nashville Railroad built a separate spur just for Western Kentucky University's Heating Plant?
• ... that Swiss illustrator Albert Lindegger was responsible for murals at the headquarters of the cantonal police and the crematorium in Berne?
• ... that in 1928, the Mayo Beach Light tower was removed from its site on Cape Cod and re-erected in California as the Point Montara Light?
  

[edit] Selected anniversaries

June 11: Kamehameha Day in Hawaii

• 1770 – English explorer James Cook ran aground on the Great Barrier Reef (pictured).
• 1892 – The Salvation Army's Limelight Department, one of the world's earliest film studios, was officially established in Melbourne, Australia.
• 1937 – Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky and several senior officers of the Red Army were convicted in the Case of Trotskyist Anti-Soviet Military Organization, a secret trial during the Great Purge in the Soviet Union.
• 1963 – Vietnamese Mahayana Buddhist monk Thích Quảng Đức burned himself to death in Saigon to protest the persecution of Buddhists by South Vietnam's Ngô Đình Diệm administration.
• 1963 – The University of Alabama was desegregated as Governor of Alabama George Wallace stepped aside after a stand in the schoolhouse door.

More events: June 10 – June 11 – June 12

[edit] Today's news

• Sudan Airways Flight 109 crashes on landing at Khartoum International Airport in Khartoum, Sudan, killing dozens.
• IBM and Los Alamos National Laboratory break a processing speed record with the world's first petaflop computer, Roadrunner (pictured).
• Following a coal mine collapse in the Donetsk region of Ukraine, 24 miners are rescued with 12 still missing and one reported dead.
• Seven people are killed and ten injured in a stabbing spree in Tokyo, Japan.
• The government of Southern Sudan withdraws its mediation efforts at the Juba talks between Uganda and the rebel Lord's Resistance Army.
• In tennis, Rafael Nadal and Ana Ivanović win the singles titles in the 2008 French Open.
• The Diet of Japan recognizes the Ainu as an indigenous people for the first time.

[edit] Today's Picture of the Day

Picture of the day
A daguerreotype of the United States Capitol in 1846, with the original green copper dome as designed by Charles Bulfinch. Over time, extensions to both the north and south wings, made to accommodate the addition of new states to the Union, made the dome aesthetically displeasing, and as a result, it was replaced by a white cast iron dome which was completed in 1866. Daguerreotype credit: John Plumbe Archive – More featured pictures...

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