The Wikipedia article of the day for August 4, 2016 is Maurice Richard.
Maurice Richard (1921–2000) was a Canadian professional ice hockey player. He played 18 seasons in the National Hockey League (NHL) for the Montreal Canadiens between 1942 and 1960. A prolific scorer, he was the first player in NHL history to score 50 goals in one season and the first to reach 500 career goals. An eight-time Stanley Cup champion, he won the Hart Trophy as most valuable player in 1947 and played in 13 consecutive All-Star Games. Richard was a cultural icon for Quebec’s Francophone population, as recounted in the short story The Hockey Sweater, which elevated him to a pan-Canadian hero. His 1955 suspension for striking an official precipitated the Richard Riot; some historians consider the incident a violent manifestation of Francophone Quebec’s dissatisfaction over its place within Canada and a precursor to the Quiet Revolution. Richard was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1961 and was named to the Order of Canada in 1967. The Canadiens retired his jersey number, 9, in 1960, and in 1998 donated the Maurice “Rocket” Richard Trophy to the NHL, awarded annually to the league’s regular season leading goal-scorer.
Wikipedia article of the day for August 4, 2016
Wikipedia article of the day for August 3, 2016
The Wikipedia article of the day for August 3, 2016 is Thorpe affair.
The Thorpe affair of the 1970s was a British political and sex scandal that ended the career of Jeremy Thorpe, the leader of the Liberal Party and Member of Parliament for North Devon. The scandal arose from allegations by Norman Scott of a homosexual affair, at a time when such relationships were illegal in the United Kingdom. Thorpe denied any such liaison and largely managed to avoid public and press scrutiny, but Scott’s allegations were a persistent threat for years, endangering the Liberal Party’s mid-1970s revival. Unsuccessful attempts to buy Scott’s silence and frighten him culminated in 1975 with the shooting of his dog by a hired gunman. The police investigation and publicity forced Thorpe’s resignation. He and three others were charged with conspiracy to murder Scott, but the main prosecution witnesses were undermined by, among other factors, their financial arrangements with newspapers. All four defendents were acquitted, although there were later claims that important prosecution evidence had been suppressed by the police. Thorpe’s reputation was damaged irreparably by evidence that was uncontested, and he did not return to public life.
Wikipedia article of the day for August 2, 2016
The Wikipedia article of the day for August 2, 2016 is Interstate 68.
Interstate 68 (I-68) is a 112.9-mile (181.7 km) Interstate highway in the U.S. states of West Virginia and Maryland, connecting Interstate 79 in Morgantown to Interstate 70 in Hancock, and is also part of the Appalachian Development Highway System. In Maryland, it parallels the historic National Road between Keysers Ridge and Hancock. A road cut at one of the many mountain ridges it crosses, Sideling Hill, exposes geological features that have become a tourist attraction. From 1965 until the freeway’s construction was completed on August 2, 1991, its segments were designated as U.S. Route 48. It crosses Allegany, Garrett, and Washington counties in Maryland, and Preston and Monongalia counties in West Virginia. The two largest cities connected by the highway are Morgantown and Cumberland, Maryland. Although the freeway serves no major metropolitan areas, it connects western Maryland and northern West Virginia and provides an alternative to the Pennsylvania Turnpike for westbound traffic from Washington, D.C. and Baltimore. US 219, US 220 and US 40 overlap in part with I-68.
Wikipedia article of the day for August 1, 2016
The Wikipedia article of the day for August 1, 2016 is Ricketts Glen State Park.
Ricketts Glen State Park is a Pennsylvania state park and American National Natural Landmark on 13,050 acres (5,280 ha) in Columbia, Luzerne, and Sullivan counties. The park has 24 named waterfalls along Kitchen Creek, as it flows down the Allegheny Front escarpment over four rock formations from the Devonian and Carboniferous periods. The earliest recorded inhabitants of the larger watershed were the Susquehannocks. The park is named for R. Bruce Ricketts, who built the trail along the waterfalls and operated a hotel there from 1873 to 1903. Ricketts made his fortune clearcutting much of what is now the park, but preserved about 2,000 acres (810 ha) of old-growth forest in its three glens. The park opened in 1944. The Benton Air Force Station, a Cold War radar installation in the park, operated from 1951 to 1975 and still serves as airport radar for nearby Wilkes-Barre and as the Red Rock Job Corps Center. The park is home to a wide variety of plants and animals and was named an Important Bird Area by the Audubon Society. The state’s Department of Conservation and Natural Resources named it one of “25 Must-See Pennsylvania State Parks”.
Wikipedia article of the day for July 31, 2016
The Wikipedia article of the day for July 31, 2016 is Smooth toadfish.
The smooth toadfish (Tetractenos glaber) is a species in the pufferfish family Tetraodontidae. It is native to shallow coastal and estuarine waters of southeastern Australia, where it is widespread and abundant. French naturalist Christophe-Paulin de La Poix de Fréminville described the species in 1813, though early records confused it with what is now the only other member of its genus, the common toadfish (T. hamiltonii). Up to 16 cm (6 1⁄4 in) long with distinctive leopard-like dark markings on its upperparts, the smooth toadfish has a flattened belly and an elongate body tapering to a slender tail. Its back and fins are rounded. Unlike most of its relatives, it does not have prominent spines on its body. Like other pufferfish, it can inflate itself with water or air. It forages for its preferred foods—molluscs and crustaceans—in sandy or muddy sediment. Often an unwanted catch by anglers, the smooth toadfish’s flesh contains the poison tetrodotoxin, and eating it may result in death.
Wikipedia article of the day for July 30, 2016
The Wikipedia article of the day for July 30, 2016 is Orel Hershiser’s scoreless innings streak.
In 1988, Orel Hershiser set the record in Major League Baseball for consecutive scoreless innings pitched. The Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher’s streak of 59 innings spanned from the sixth inning of an August 30 game against the Montreal Expos to the tenth inning of a September 28 game against the San Diego Padres, not counting eight scoreless innings he pitched to start Game 1 of the 1988 National League Championship Series on October 4. The previous record of 58 2⁄3 innings was set by former Dodger pitcher Don Drysdale in 1968; as the team’s radio announcer, Drysdale called Hershiser’s streak as he pursued the new record. Following the regular season, Hershiser was awarded the National League Cy Young Award. In the playoffs, he earned both the National League Championship Series Most Valuable Player Award (MVP) and the World Series MVP Award. He also secured Sportsman of the Year and Associated Press Athlete of the Year honors. He continued to be an effective pitcher for many seasons, making two additional appearances in the World Series and winning the 1995 American League Championship Series MVP Award.
Wikipedia article of the day for July 29, 2016
The Wikipedia article of the day for July 29, 2016 is Silverplate.
Silverplate was the codename for the United States Army Air Forces’ participation in the Manhattan Project during World War II. Originally the name for the aircraft modification project for the B-29 Superfortress bomber to enable it to drop an atomic weapon, Silverplate eventually came to identify the training and operational aspects of the program as well. Modifications began in November 1943 on a prototype B-29 known as the “Pullman”, used for bomb flight testing at Muroc Army Air Field in California commencing in March 1944. Seventeen production Silverplate aircraft were ordered in August 1944 for 509th Composite Group training, and to allow the 216th Army Air Forces Base Unit to test bomb configurations. In February 1945, 28 more were ordered, including Bockscar (pictured), the plane that carried out the atomic bombing of Nagasaki in August 1945. A total of 65 Silverplate B-29s were made. The use of the Silverplate codename was discontinued after the war; modifications to an additional 80 aircraft continued under a new codename, Saddletree.
Wikipedia article of the day for July 28, 2016
The Wikipedia article of the day for July 28, 2016 is Horace Greeley.
Horace Greeley (1811–1872) was editor of the New-York Tribune, as well as the Democratic and Liberal Republican candidate in the 1872 U.S. presidential election. Born to a poor family in New Hampshire, Greeley in 1831 went to New York City to seek his fortune. He lived there the rest of his life, but also spent much time at his farm in Chappaqua. In 1841, he founded the Tribune, which became the highest-circulating newspaper in the country. He urged the settlement of the American West, popularizing the phrase “Go West, young man, and grow up with the country”, though it is uncertain if he invented it. Greeley was briefly a Whig congressman from New York, and helped found the Republican Party in 1854. When the Civil War broke out, he mostly supported President Abraham Lincoln, and urged the end of slavery. Greeley ran in 1872 in an attempt to unseat President Ulysses Grant, whose administration he deemed corrupt, but lost in a landslide. Devastated at the defeat, he died three weeks after Election Day.
Wikipedia article of the day for July 27, 2016
The Wikipedia article of the day for July 27, 2016 is SS Washingtonian (1913).
SS Washingtonian was a cargo ship launched in 1913 by the Maryland Steel Company, one of eight sister ships for the American-Hawaiian Steamship Company and the largest cargo ship under American registry at the time. During the American occupation of Veracruz in April 1914, the ship was chartered by the Department of the Navy for service as a refrigerated supply ship for the U.S. fleet stationed off the Mexican coast. In January 1915, after a little more than one year of service, Washingtonian collided with the schooner Elizabeth Palmer off the Delaware coast after the cargo ship’s captain misjudged the schooner’s rapid pace. Washingtonian sank in ten minutes with the loss of a $1,000,000 cargo of raw Hawaiian sugar. In the days after the sinking, the price of sugar in the United States increased almost 9%, partly attributed to the loss of this cargo. Lying under approximately 100 feet (30 m) of water, the wreck is one of the most popular recreational dive sites on the eastern seaboard.
Wikipedia article of the day for July 26, 2016
The Wikipedia article of the day for July 26, 2016 is Pavo (constellation).
Pavo is a constellation in the southern sky with the Latin name for peacock. It is one of twelve constellations conceived by Petrus Plancius from the observations of Pieter Dirkszoon Keyser and Frederick de Houtman. First appearing on a 35 cm (14 in) diameter celestial globe published in 1598 in Amsterdam by Plancius and Jodocus Hondius, it was depicted in Johann Bayer’s star atlas Uranometria of 1603. The constellation’s brightest member, Alpha Pavonis, is also known as Peacock and appears as a 1.91-magnitude blue-white star, but is actually a spectroscopic binary. Delta Pavonis is a Sun-like star some 19.9 light years distant. Six of the star systems in Pavo have been found to host planets, including HD 181433 with a super-earth, and HD 172555 with evidence of a major interplanetary collision in the past few thousand years. The constellation contains NGC 6752, the third-brightest globular cluster in the sky, and the spiral galaxy NGC 6744, which closely resembles our Milky Way but is twice as large.
