Wikipedia:Main Page history/2018 March 14

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From today's featured article

Thomas R. Marshall (March 14, 1854 – June 1, 1925) was a Democratic politician who served as the 28th Vice President of the United States from 1913 to 1921. As the 27th Governor of Indiana, he proposed a new, controversial state constitution and pressed for other Progressive Era reforms. His popularity as governor, and Indiana's status as a critical swing state, helped him secure the vice presidential nomination on a ticket with Woodrow Wilson in 1912 and win the general election. During World War I, after a small number of anti-war senators kept the Senate deadlocked by refusing to end debate, Marshall led the body to adopt its first rule allowing filibusters to be ended by a two-thirds majority vote. After a stroke incapacitated Wilson in October 1919, many cabinet officials and Congressional leaders urged Marshall to become acting president, but he refused to forcibly assume the presidency for fear of setting a precedent. Well known for his wit and sense of humor, he once quipped during a Senate debate, "What this country needs is a really good five-cent cigar". (Full article...)

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Did you know...

Camilla Nylund

... that Camilla Nylund (pictured) appeared as the Countess in Capriccio by Richard Strauss at the Frankfurt Opera, staged by Brigitte Fassbaender, who set the opera in Occupied France?
... that in the United States, children ages 2–17 with milk allergy are shorter on average than their non-allergic peers?
... that Fidel Castro Díaz-Balart led a failed twelve-year effort to build nuclear reactors in Cuba?
... that Lion Forge Comics was founded to provide ethnically diverse creators an outlet to create ethnically diverse characters?
... that the Magill Youth Training Centre was described by a Youth Representative to the United Nations as being "the worst of its kind"?
... that Alaskans in coastal areas evacuated to higher ground where they waited to see if the 2018 Gulf of Alaska earthquake had caused a tsunami?
... that the 5th Marquess of Donegall married at the age of 80, gained a son and heir nine months later, and died within a year leaving an estate valued at £27?
... that during the American Revolutionary War, George Washington participated in "a pretty little frisk" at the Van Veghten House?

In the news

Stephen Hawking

British physicist and cosmologist Stephen Hawking (pictured) dies at the age of 76.
At least 49 people are killed after US-Bangla Airlines Flight 211 crashes en route from Dhaka, Bangladesh, to Kathmandu, Nepal.
The Winter Paralympics open in Pyeongchang, South Korea.
The wreck of USS Lexington is discovered in the Coral Sea.
A coalition of centre-right parties wins a plurality in the Italian general election.

On this day...

March 14: New Year's Day (Sikhism); White Day in East Asia; Pi Day

Catherine Cornaro

1489 – Queen of Cyprus Catherine Cornaro (pictured) was forced to abdicate and sell the administration of the island to the Republic of Venice.
1885 – The Mikado, Gilbert and Sullivan's most frequently performed Savoy opera, debuted at the Savoy Theatre in London.
1910 – Oil prospectors in Kern County, California, drilled into a pressurized oil deposit, resulting in the largest accidental oil spill in history.
1978 – Israeli–Lebanese conflict: The Israel Defense Forces began Operation Litani, invading and occupying southern Lebanon, and pushing PLO troops north up to the Litani River.
1988 – China defeated Vietnam in a naval battle as the former attempted to establish oceanographic observation posts on the Spratly Islands.

George Wade (d. 1748) · Lucy Hobbs Taylor (b. 1833) · Diane Arbus (b. 1923)

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Today's featured picture

The Albert Bridge is a road bridge over the River Thames in West London, connecting Chelsea to Battersea. Designed in 1873 as a cable-stayed bridge, it proved structurally unsound, and thus between 1884 and 1887 some design elements of a suspension bridge were incorporated. In 1973 two concrete piers were added, transforming the central span into a simple beam bridge. It remains one of only two Thames road bridges in central London never to have been replaced, and features the only surviving examples of bridge tollbooths in London.

Photograph: David Iliff

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