Wikipedia:Main Page history/2023 October 19
From today's featured article
Spacewar! is a space combat video game developed in 1962 by Steve Russell in collaboration with Martin Graetz, Wayne Wiitanen, Bob Saunders, Steve Piner, and others. The first video game known to be played at multiple computer installations, it was popular in the small American programming community in the 1960s. Players wage a dogfight between two spaceships with limited weaponry and fuel in the gravity well of a star. Spacewar! was written for the newly installed Digital Equipment PDP-1, a minicomputer, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the public domain code was widely ported. Saunders built an early gamepad controller for the game. It directly inspired many electronic games, such as the first commercial arcade video games, Galaxy Game and Computer Space (both 1971), and later games such as Asteroids (1979). In 2007, Spacewar! was named to a list of the ten most important video games of all time, which formed the start of the game canon at the Library of Congress. (Full article...)
Did you know ...
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- ... that to promote The Simpsons Movie in 2007, 20th Century Fox gifted a sculpture of a doughnut (pictured) to the town of Springfield, New Zealand?
- ... that James Edward Moore was the chief of staff of the Ninth United States Army, which Omar Bradley described as "uncommonly normal"?
- ... that to include the popular Marian hymn "Maria zu lieben, ist allzeit mein Sinn" in the first common Catholic hymnal in German, Friedrich Dörr retained only its first line?
- ... that Keith Hartwig overcame an injury that he was told would end his career in high school, and went on to play in the National Football League?
- ... that no single political party has a mandate in a coalition government?
- ... that Freedom of Religion South Africa filed an unsuccessful lawsuit to keep child spanking legal?
- ... that Jerome Robbins choreographed In G Major for New York City Ballet's Ravel Festival, in celebration of the composer's centenary?
- ... that despite claims to the contrary, novelist Walter Tevis insisted that the characters of "Minnesota Fats" and "Fast Eddie" in The Hustler were fictitious?
In the news
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- Daniel Noboa (pictured) is elected President of Ecuador.
- The National Party, led by Christopher Luxon, wins the most seats in the New Zealand general election.
- Australian voters reject altering the Constitution to establish an Indigenous Voice to Parliament.
- NASA's Psyche mission is launched to explore the metal-rich asteroid 16 Psyche.
On this day
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- 1579 – A ceremony was held in Edinburgh marking the coming of age of James VI of Scotland as an adult ruler.
- 1752 – The Pennsylvania Gazette published a statement by Benjamin Franklin describing a kite experiment (depicted) to determine the electrical nature of lightning.
- 1914 – First World War: Allied forces began engaging German troops at the First Battle of Ypres.
- 1987 – Iran–Iraq War: U.S. Navy forces destroyed two Iranian oil platforms in the Persian Gulf in response to an Iranian missile attack on a Kuwaiti oil tanker three days earlier.
- 2013 – British YouTube collective the Sidemen were formed as a Rockstar Games Social Club group in Grand Theft Auto Online.
- John Rolph (d. 1870)
- Eleanor Norcross (d. 1923)
- Demetrios Christodoulou (b. 1951)
- Ali Treki (d. 2015)
Today's featured picture
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The mistletoebird (Dicaeum hirundinaceum), also known as the mistletoe flowerpecker, is a species of flowerpecker native to most of Australia (though absent from Tasmania and the driest desert areas) and also to the eastern Maluku Islands of Indonesia in the Arafura Sea between Australia and New Guinea. The mistletoebird eats mainly the berries of the parasitic mistletoe and is a vector for the spread of the mistletoe's seeds through its digestive system. The mistletoebird is small, being 9–10 centimetres long and 7.5–11 grams in weight. The male is glossy blue-black above, with a red chest and a slight red under-tail, and a black centre stripe running down its white belly. The female is dark grey above, with a white throat, light grey underparts, and just a touch of pinkish-red under the tail. The eyes, bill, and legs are black; the bill is just over a centimetre long, slender, slightly down-curved and sharply pointed. Immature birds are similar to the female, but have an orange-pink bill instead of black. This male mistletoebird was photographed in the Round Hill Nature Reserve in New South Wales, Australia. Photograph credit: JJ Harrison
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