Wikipedia:Main Page history/2019 September 8

From today's featured article

Wipeout 3 is a racing video game developed by Psygnosis and published by Sony Computer Entertainment for the PlayStation console, first released on 8 September 1999. In this third game in the Wipeout series, players control extremely fast anti-gravity ships in a futuristic setting and use weapons to force other contenders out of the race. Psygnosis hired the British design studio Designers Republic to develop the game's look and feel, wanting a futuristic yet plausible setting. The game's soundtrack was assembled from electronica artists including The Chemical Brothers and Orbital, as well as other performers. Critics praised Wipeout 3's audiovisual presentation, with complaints leveled at the game's unforgiving learning curve and controls. Despite overall positive reception, the game was a financial disappointment. Wipeout 3 Special Edition, featuring additional content, was released in 2000, and the next entry in the series, Wipeout Fusion, was released for the PlayStation 2 in 2002. (Full article...)

Did you know...

West Point cadets toss their hats.

• ... that West Point cadets fill their hats with notes and other items for small children to collect after the hat toss (pictured) during their graduation ceremony?
• ... that former Mexican police chief Gilberto Lerma Plata was ordered to forfeit US$10 billion in drug profits?
• ... that Zenker's fruit bat often forages in areas of forest where Haumania liebrechtsiana grows, a plant favoured by gorillas and chimpanzees?
• ... that Chinese Muslim scholar Yu Zhengui worked as a laogai labourer during the Cultural Revolution?
• ... that the Jewish Democratic Committee and the Romanian Communist Party together sent Romanian Jews to Israel, hoping to make it a communist ally?
• ... that the African-American conductor Henry Lewis conducted the Seventh Army Symphony Orchestra in support of America's cultural diplomacy initiatives after World War II?
• ... that the Sogenanntes Linksradikales Blasorchester ('So-called Left Radical Wind Band') played at demonstrations against nuclear power and far-right politics, and at the Berliner Philharmonie?
• ... that Claude Ruggieri described pyrotechny as "a dark chaos which one cannot penetrate without the torch of chemistry"?

In the news

Robert Mugabe

• The Indian Space Research Organisation loses contact with Chandrayaan-2's Vikram lunar lander approximately 2.1 kilometres (1.3 mi) above the Moon's surface.
• 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.

On this day

Severn Bridge

• 1755 – French and Indian War: Despite being ambushed at the start of the Battle of Lake George, British colonial troops and their Mohawk allies were able to defeat French and Canadien troops and their Indian allies.
• 1831 – William IV and Adelaide of Saxe-Meiningen were crowned king and queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.
• 1900 – The Great Galveston hurricane, the deadliest disaster in U.S. history, struck Galveston, Texas, with estimated winds of 135 miles per hour (215 km/h) at landfall, killing at least 6,000 people.
• 1966 – Queen Elizabeth II opened the Severn Bridge (pictured), suggesting that it marked the dawn of a new economic era for South Wales.
• 1994 – USAir Flight 427 crashed on approach to Pittsburgh International Airport, resulting in 132 deaths and the longest accident investigation in the history of the National Transportation Safety Board.

Sabrina Sidney (d. 1843) · Andrei Kirilenko (b. 1906) · Margaret Hodge (b. 1944)