Wikipedia:Main Page history/2018 May 8

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From today's featured article

1764 map showing the area around the battleground

The Battle of the Cedars (May 1776) was a series of skirmishes early in the American Revolutionary War in and around the Cedars, 45 km (28 mi) west of Montreal, British North America. Continental Army units were opposed by a small number of British troops leading militia, together with indigenous forces (primarily Iroquois). Brigadier General Benedict Arnold, commanding the American military garrison at Montreal, had placed troops at the Cedars in April on rumors of British military preparations. The garrison surrendered to a force led by Captain George Forster, and reinforcements were captured the next day. All of the American captives were eventually released in a prisoner swap agreement, but the deal was repudiated by Congress, and no British prisoners were freed. News of the affair included greatly inflated reports of casualties, and often included graphic but false accounts of atrocities committed by the Iroquois, who made up the majority of the British forces. (Full article...)

Part of the Canadian campaign of 1775 series, one of Wikipedia's featured topics.

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Did you know...

Henriette Feuerbach, painted by her stepson

... that Henriette Feuerbach (pictured) wrote a book for women and promoted the art of her stepson, the painter Anselm Feuerbach?
... that the video game Observer stars Rutger Hauer, who also starred in Blade Runner, which influenced the game?
... that before Zheng Tuobin became China's Minister of Foreign Trade, he spent five years performing manual labour?
... that the alpine skier Corey Peters won a silver medal for New Zealand at the 2014 Winter Paralympics?
... that mezzo-soprano Melinda Paulsen was the first to record songs by Nadia Boulanger and Ethel Smyth?
... that during the construction of New York City's Van Wyck Expressway, a four-story apartment building was placed on metal rollers and relocated away from the expressway's path?
... that Kavinder Gupta was elected mayor of Jammu for a record three consecutive terms?
... that George Speake sees an "eyeless, open-jawed serpent" on the Staffordshire helmet?

In the news

Artist's rendering of the InSight lander

In American horse racing, Justify wins the Kentucky Derby, ridden by jockey Mike Smith.
The InSight spacecraft (rendering pictured) and its companion MarCO cubesats are successfully launched towards Mars.
The eruption of Hawaii's Kīlauea volcano, and the subsequent earthquake, forces the evacuation of nearly two thousand people.
The awarding of the Nobel Prize in Literature is postponed until 2019.

On this day...

May 8: World Red Cross and Red Crescent Day; Miguel Hidalgo's Birthday in Mexico; Parents' Day in South Korea

Sketch of the Versailles rail accident

1842 – A train derailed and caught fire (pictured) in Paris, killing between 52 and 200 people.
1924 – Lithuania signed the Klaipėda Convention with the nations of the Conference of Ambassadors, formally taking the Klaipėda Region (German: Memelland) from East Prussia and making it into an autonomous region under unconditional sovereignty of Lithuania.
1945 – A parade to celebrate the end of World War II turned into a riot, followed by widespread disturbances and killings in and around Sétif, French Algeria.
1963 – In Huế, South Vietnam, soldiers of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam opened fire into a crowd of Buddhist protestors against a government ban on the flying of the Buddhist flag on Vesākha, killing nine and sparking the Buddhist crisis.
1987 – A British Army Special Air Service unit ambushed a Provisional Irish Republican Army unit in Loughgall, Northern Ireland, killing eight IRA members and a civilian.

Thomas Drury (b. 1551) · Helena Blavatsky (d. 1891) · Beatrice Worsley (d. 1972)

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Today's featured picture

An early example of high-dynamic-range imaging, captured by Gustave Le Gray in 1854. For this image, which was impossible at the time using standard methods owing to the extreme luminosity range, Le Gray combined one exposure for the sky and another longer one for the sea. Today, photographs with high dynamic range are primarily produced through computer renderings or merging multiple low-dynamic-range images; special image sensors, such as an oversampled binary image sensor, may also be used.

Photograph: Gustave Le Gray

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