The Wikipedia article of the day for September 13, 2016 is SS Montanan.
SS Montanan was a cargo ship operated by the American-Hawaiian Steamship Company. Built in 1912 by the Maryland Steel Company as one of eight sister ships, the freighter was employed in inter-coastal service, first via the Isthmus of Tehuantepec and then the Panama Canal, after it opened in 1914. The ship was 6,649 gross register tons (GRT), 428 ft 9 in (130.68 m) in length and 53 ft 7 in (16.33 m) abeam. Used by the United States Army Transport Service during World War I, USAT Montanan carried cargo and animals to France, and sailed in the first American convoy to France after the United States entered the war in April 1917. During another eastbound convoy in August 1918, Montanan was torpedoed and sunk by the German submarine U-90 some 500 nautical miles (900 km) west of Le Verdon-sur-Mer, France. Of the 86 men aboard the ship, 81 were rescued by a convoy escort. The other five were killed, including two of the ship’s Naval Armed Guardsmen, drowned when their lifeboat capsized in the heavy seas.
Wikipedia article of the day for September 13, 2016
Wikipedia article of the day for September 12, 2016
The Wikipedia article of the day for September 12, 2016 is Subway Sadie.
Subway Sadie is a 1926 American comedy-drama film directed by Alfred Santell. Adapted from Mildred Cram’s 1925 short story “Sadie of the Desert”, the silent film focuses on a relationship between New York salesgirl Sadie Hermann (Dorothy Mackaill) and subway guard Herb McCarthy (Jack Mulhall), who meet on a subway and become engaged. After Sadie receives a promotion, she must choose between her new job and marrying Herb. The cast includes Charles Murray, Peggy Shaw, Gaston Glass, and Bernard Randall. The film began production in May 1926. Arthur Edeson served as cinematographer, shooting scenes in a nightclub and a casino, and at Cleopatra’s Needle in Central Park. Distributed by First National Pictures, the film premiered in New York on September 12, 1926. Many publications wrote positively of the film, praising its acting and Santell’s direction. Today, it remains unclear if a print of Subway Sadie has survived. A poster of the film can be seen at the New York Transit Museum.
Wikipedia article of the day for September 11, 2016
The Wikipedia article of the day for September 11, 2016 is Banksia coccinea.
Banksia coccinea, commonly known as the scarlet banksia, is an erect shrub or small tree in the family Proteaceae. It grows along the southern coast of Western Australia on white or grey sand in shrubland, heath or open woodland. Reaching up to 8 m (26 ft) in height, it is a single-stemmed plant with oblong leaves. The prominent red and white flower spikes appear mainly in the spring. As they age they develop small follicles that store seeds until opened by bushfire. Though widely occurring, it is highly sensitive to dieback and large populations of plants have succumbed to the disease. It was first collected and described by Robert Brown in the early 19th century. The flowers attract nectar- and insect-feeding birds, particularly honeyeaters, and a variety of insects. A popular garden plant and one of the most important Banksia species for the cut flower industry, it is grown commercially in Australia, South Africa, Canada, the United States, New Zealand and Israel. In cultivation, it grows well in a sunny location on well-drained soil, but cannot survive in areas with humid or wet summers.
Wikipedia article of the day for September 10, 2016
The Wikipedia article of the day for September 10, 2016 is North Norfolk Coast Site of Special Scientific Interest.
The North Norfolk Coast Site of Special Scientific Interest in Norfolk, England, is a Special Protection Area for birds and other wildlife, included in the European Union’s Natura 2000 network of protected sites. Its habitats include reed beds, salt marshes, freshwater lagoons, and sand or shingle beaches, across 7,700 ha (19,027 acres) of the county’s north coast. The wetlands are important for scarce breeding birds such as pied avocets. The location also attracts rare migrating birds, and ducks and geese winter along this coast in considerable numbers. The area is archaeologically significant, with sites including the mound of an Iron Age fort, a Roman naval port near Brancaster, medieval ruins, and remnants of military use from both world wars. The area attracts many tourists for birdwatching and other outdoor activities. The threat of the sea’s encroachment on this soft coast is being met by managed retreat and the creation of new reserves inland. The site is designated as a wetland of international importance, and most of it is a Biosphere Reserve.
Wikipedia article of the day for September 9, 2016
The Wikipedia article of the day for September 9, 2016 is Milos Raonic.
Milos Raonic (born 1990) is a Canadian professional tennis player. He reached a career-high world No. 4 singles ranking in May 2015, as ranked by the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP). His career highlights include a Grand Slam final at the 2016 Wimbledon Championships and two Grand Slam semifinals at the 2014 Wimbledon Championships and 2016 Australian Open. He was the 2011 ATP Newcomer of the Year, and has been ranked continuously inside the top 20 since August 2012. Raonic is the first player born in the 1990s to win an ATP title, to be ranked in the top 10, and to qualify for the ATP World Tour Finals. He has eight ATP singles titles, all won on hard courts. He is frequently described as having one of the best serves among his contemporaries. Statistically, he is among the strongest servers in the Open Era, winning 91% of service games to rank third all-time. Aided by his serve, he plays an all-court style with an emphasis on short points. Raonic has more ATP titles and finals appearances in the Open Era than all other Canadian men combined.
Wikipedia article of the day for September 8, 2016
The Wikipedia article of the day for September 8, 2016 is The Man Trap.
“The Man Trap” was the first episode to be broadcast in the American science fiction television series Star Trek, but the sixth to be filmed. It aired on NBC on September 8, 1966. The story was assigned to George Clayton Johnson; his first draft was entitled “Damsel With a Dulcimer”, incorporating elements from his Twilight Zone episode “The Four of Us Are Dying”. Series creator Gene Roddenberry, producer Robert H. Justman and story editor John D. F. Black all tweaked elements of the episode. The story, part of Roddenberry’s original Star Trek pitch to the studio, was chosen for the first broadcast episode because the studio liked its horror-based plot. “The Man Trap” placed first in the timeslot with a Nielsen rating of 25.2 percent for the first half-hour and 24.2 for the remainder. After broadcast, reviewers criticized the violent scenes but praised the acting. More recent appraisals have been mixed; praise has been given to the plot and diverse cast, but Hollywood.com listed it among the worst episodes of the series. The creature, created by Wah Chang and William Ware Theiss, has been dubbed the “salt vampire” by fans.
Wikipedia article of the day for September 7, 2016
The Wikipedia article of the day for September 7, 2016 is Krulak Mendenhall mission.
The Krulak Mendenhall mission was an American fact-finding expedition sent by President Kennedy’s administration to South Vietnam in 1963. It investigated the progress of the war by the South Vietnamese regime and their US military advisers against the Viet Cong insurgency. The mission was led by Victor Krulak (pictured), a major general in the Marine Corps, and Joseph Mendenhall, a senior Foreign Service officer experienced in Vietnamese affairs. The four-day whirlwind trip came in the wake of increasingly strained relations between the United States and South Vietnam. In their submissions Krulak presented an optimistic report on the progress of the war, but Mendenhall presented a bleak picture of military failure and public discontent. Krulak said that the Vietnamese soldiers’ efforts in the field would not be affected by the public’s unease with President Ngô Đình Diệm’s policies. Mendenhall concluded that those policies increased the possibility of religious civil war and led the South Vietnamese to believe that their quality of life would improve under the Viet Cong. The contradictory reports prompted Kennedy to ask, “You two did visit the same country, didn’t you?”
Wikipedia article of the day for September 6, 2016
The Wikipedia article of the day for September 6, 2016 is Triturus.
Triturus is a genus of European and West Asian newts, with two species of marbled newts and seven species of crested newts. They live and breed in vegetation-rich aquatic habitats for two to six months and usually spend the rest of the year in shady, well-protected land habitats close to their breeding sites. Males court females with a ritualised display, ending in the deposition of a spermatophore that is picked up by the female. After fertilisation, a female lays 200–400 eggs, folding them individually into leaves of water plants. Larvae develop over two to four months before metamorphosing into land-dwelling juveniles. The alpine newt (Ichthyosaura alpestris), banded newts (Ommatotriton), and small-bodied newts (Lissotriton) are now placed in other genera, leaving the European brook newts (Calotriton) as Triturus’s closest relatives. Although not immediately threatened, crested and marbled newts suffer from population declines, caused mainly by habitat loss and fragmentation. All species are legally protected in Europe, and some of their habitats have been designated as special nature reserves.
Wikipedia article of the day for September 5, 2016
The Wikipedia article of the day for September 5, 2016 is Calutron.
A calutron (pictured) is a device that separates isotopes of a chemical element by ionizing, accelerating and deflecting them using electric and magnetic fields. A type of sector mass spectrometer, it was developed by Ernest O. Lawrence at the Radiation Laboratory at the University of California as part of the Manhattan Project during World War II, based on his earlier invention, the cyclotron. Calutrons were used to separate the isotopes of uranium on an industrial scale at the Y-12 plant at the Clinton Engineer Works in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. The enriched uranium produced was used in the Little Boy atomic bomb employed in the bombing of Hiroshima on 6 August 1945. Electromagnetic uranium enrichment was abandoned in the early post-war period in favor of the more complicated, but more efficient, gaseous diffusion method, but calutrons remained in use to produce isotopically enriched samples of naturally occurring elements for military, scientific and medical purposes.
Wikipedia article of the day for September 4, 2016
The Wikipedia article of the day for September 4, 2016 is Wotton (Metropolitan Railway) railway station.
Wotton railway station in Buckinghamshire, England, was part of a horse-drawn freight tramway built by Richard Plantagenet Campbell Temple-Nugent-Brydges-Chandos-Grenville, 3rd Duke of Buckingham and Chandos in 1871. It served the Duke’s home at Wotton House and the nearby village of Wotton Underwood. In 1872 the line was extended to the nearby town of Brill, converted to passenger use, equipped with steam locomotives, and named the Brill Tramway. In the 1880s, the route was taken over by the Metropolitan Railway. Wotton, the Tramway’s third busiest passenger station, was also a transit point for large shipments of milk from local farms. In 1933 the Metropolitan Railway became the Metropolitan line of London Transport, making Wotton a station on the London Underground, despite its distance from London. In November 1935 London Transport withdrew all services from the route. The Tramway reverted to the descendants of the Duke of Buckingham, but having no funds and no rolling stock they were unable to operate it. By early April 1936 the line’s entire infrastructure, including Wotton station, had been sold for scrap at auction.
