Wikipedia:Main Page history/2014 May 8

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From today's featured article

The Doom Bar is a sandbar at the mouth of the estuary of the River Camel on the north coast of Cornwall, England. It is composed mainly of marine sand, more than 60 per cent of which is derived from marine shells making it an important source of agricultural lime which has been collected for hundreds of years. According to tradition, the Doom Bar formed in the reign of Henry VIII, damaging the prosperity of the port of Padstow a mile up the estuary. Until the 20th century, access to Padstow's harbour was via a narrow and difficult channel between the Doom Bar and the cliffs at Stepper Point, and many ships were wrecked on the Doom Bar, including the 12-gun schooner HMS Whiting in 1816. In the early 20th century the main channel moved away from the cliffs, and continued dredging has made it much safer for boats, but deaths have occurred on the bar as recently as 1997. A Cornish folklore legend relates that a mermaid created the bar as a dying curse on the harbour after she was shot by a local man. The Doom Bar has been used in poetry to symbolise feelings of melancholy, and it has given its name to the flagship ale from Sharp's Brewery. (Full article...)

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From Wikipedia's new and recently improved content:

... that Marcel Hug (pictured), "The Silver Bullet", has won the Paris, Berlin, New York and London wheelchair marathons?
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... that the life story of actress and television presenter Štěpánka Haničincová was the subject of a 2003 documentary?
... that actress Samira Wiley works on Orange Is the New Black alongside a writer and another cast member with whom she became friends while attending the Juilliard School?
... that the newest Interstate Highway designation in Michigan is Interstate 73, but it has never been built?
... that Assam state communist leader Drupad Borgohain was born on the anniversary of the October Revolution?

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In the news

The Constitutional Court of Thailand rules that Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra (pictured) abused her power and removes her from office.
Mark Selby defeats Ronnie O'Sullivan to win the World Snooker Championship.
Two bus bombings in Nairobi, Kenya, kill three people and injure sixty-two others.
Lyricist Gulzar receives the Dadasaheb Phalke Award, the highest award in Indian cinema.
In horse racing, California Chrome, ridden by Victor Espinoza, wins the Kentucky Derby.

Ongoing: Ukrainian unrest – MV Sewol – Chibok kidnapping
Recent deaths: Maria Lassnig – Tatiana Samoilova

On this day...

May 8: Victory in Europe Day; World Red Cross and Red Crescent Day; Miguel Hidalgo's Birthday in Mexico

453 BC – The house of Zhao defeated the house of Zhi, ending the Battle of Jinyang, a military conflict between the elite families of the State of Jin during the Spring and Autumn period of China.
1886 – In Atlanta, American pharmacist John Pemberton first sold his carbonated beverage Coca-Cola (pictured) as a patent medicine, claiming that it cured a number of diseases.
1924 – Lithuania signed the Klaipėda Convention with the nations of the Conference of Ambassadors, taking the Klaipėda Region from East Prussia and making it into an autonomous region under unconditional sovereignty of Lithuania.
1972 – Four members of Black September hijacked Sabena Flight 571 to demand the release of 315 convicted Palestinian terrorists.
1984 – The Soviet Union announced the boycott of the Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, citing security concerns and stated that "chauvinistic sentiments and an anti-Soviet hysteria [were] being whipped up in the United States".

More anniversaries: May 7 – May 8 – May 9

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Today's featured picture

The Battle of Spotsylvania Court House was the second major battle in Ulysses S. Grant's 1864 Overland Campaign of the American Civil War. Following the Battle of the Wilderness, Grant's forces disengaged from Robert E. Lee's Confederate army and moved to the southeast. Elements of Lee's army beat the Union army to the critical crossroads of Spotsylvania Court House and began entrenching. Fighting occurred on and off from May 8 through May 21; ultimately the battle was tactically inconclusive, but with a total of almost 32,000 casualties, it was the costliest battle of the campaign.

This chromolithograph was published by L. Prang & Co. in 1887, based on the work by Thure de Thulstrup.

Illustration: Thure de Thulstrup; restoration: Adam Cuerden

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