Wikipedia:Main Page history/2020 December 8

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From today's featured article

Cyclone Chapala was a powerful tropical cyclone that hit Yemen and brushed Somalia in November 2015. The third named storm of the 2015 North Indian Ocean cyclone season, it developed as a depression on 28 October off western India, and strengthened a day later into a cyclonic storm. On 30 October, the India Meteorological Department estimated Chapala's peak three-minute sustained winds at 215 km/h (130 mph). The Joint Typhoon Warning Center estimated one-minute sustained winds of 240 km/h (150 mph), making Chapala one of the strongest cyclones on record in the Arabian Sea. Chapala skirted the Yemeni island of Socotra on 1 November, becoming the first hurricane-force storm there since 1922. Upon entering the Gulf of Aden on 2 November, it became the strongest known cyclone in that body of water. After brushing Somalia, the storm made landfall on 3 November, near Mukalla, Yemen, as a very severe cyclonic storm. It was the strongest storm on record to strike Yemen, where eight people died. (Full article...)

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Did you know ...

Pere Marquette 18 under tow in the 1900s

... that the wreck of the train ferry Pere Marquette 18 (pictured) was discovered in Lake Michigan 109 years after she sank?
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... that a gun serial number can be any combination of numbers, letters or other symbols?
... that conductor and politician Klaus Bernbacher was responsible for 600 Radio Bremen music broadcasts, including of the original version of Schönberg's Gurre-Lieder?
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... that the Bundestag apologized in 2016 for Imperial Germany's "inglorious role" in the Armenian Genocide?
... that Salma wrote some of her works while sitting on the toilet, on pieces of paper ripped from calendars and notebooks?

In the news

COVID-19 pandemic: Disease; Virus; By location; Impact; Vaccines; Portal

Hayabusa2

In motorsport, Sébastien Ogier and Julien Ingrassia win the World Rally Championship, while Hyundai win the manufacturers' title.
Hayabusa2 (artist's impression pictured) successfully returns samples collected from asteroid 162173 Ryugu to Earth.
Zdravko Krivokapić takes office as Prime Minister of Montenegro, becoming the first independent to hold the post.
In India, a nationwide general strike occurs and 100,000 people continue with the farmers' protests surrounding New Delhi.

On this day

December 8: Feast of the Immaculate Conception (Roman Rite Catholicism); Rōhatsu in Japan

John Lennon

1432 – The first battle of the Lithuanian Civil War, between the forces of Švitrigaila and Sigismund Kęstutaitis, was fought near Ashmyany.
1880 – At an assembly of 10,000 Boers, Paul Kruger announced the fulfilment of the decision to restore the government and volksraad of the South African Republic.
1927 – Three different organizations established by Robert S. Brookings merged to form the Brookings Institution, one of the United States' oldest think tanks.
1980 – John Lennon (pictured) was murdered at the entrance of the Dakota in New York.
2010 – The Japanese experimental spacecraft IKAROS flew by Venus at a distance of 80,800 km (50,200 mi), completing its planned mission to demonstrate solar-sail technology.

Antonio de Benavides (b. 1678)
John Banville (b. 1945)
Ann T. Bowling (d. 2000)

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Today's featured picture

The golden-headed cisticola (Cisticola exilis) is a species of warbler in the family Cisticolidae, found in Asia and Australia. An unobtrusive bird, it forages for invertebrates, such as insects and small slugs, near the ground, but supplements its diet with grass seeds. Both sexes construct the rounded nest with a side entrance in a grass tussock or among tangled herbage. Built of green leaves and fine grasses and lined with soft plant down, it is stitched together with cobweb silk and camouflaged on the outside with further herbage. The female incubates the eggs and the male drives off intruders, but despite this concealment and care, only 32 per cent of the eggs successfully hatch. This golden-headed cisticola was photographed near Cornwallis, New South Wales, in Australia.

Photograph credit: John Harrison

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