Wikipedia:Main Page history/2016 February 17

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From today's featured article

Myles Standish (c. 1584 – 1656) was an English military officer hired by the Pilgrims as military advisor for the Plymouth Colony. One of the Mayflower passengers, Standish played a leading role in the administration and defense of the colony from its inception. On February 17, 1621, the colony militia elected him as its first commander and continued to re-elect him to that position for the remainder of his life. He served as an agent of Plymouth Colony in England, and as assistant governor and treasurer of the colony. He was also one of the first settlers and founders of the town of Duxbury, Massachusetts. As a military leader, Standish favored preemptive action, sometimes angering Native Americans and disturbing more moderate members of the colony. By the 1640s, he relinquished his role as an active soldier and settled into a quieter life on his Duxbury farm. Several towns and military installations have been named for Standish, and monuments have been built in his memory. The popularity of the fictionalized book The Courtship of Miles Standish by H.W. Longfellow helped to cement the Pilgrim story in US culture. (Full article...)

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In the news

Alejandro G. Iñárritu

The Revenant wins five awards, including Best Film and Best Director (Alejandro G. Iñárritu, pictured), at the British Academy Film Awards.
Pope Francis and Patriarch Kirill call jointly for an end to persecution of Christians in the Middle East and to wars in the region.
Scientists using the LIGO detector announce the first direct observation of gravitational waves.
Eleven people are killed in a head-on collision between two passenger trains near Bad Aibling, Germany.
In American football, the Denver Broncos defeat the Carolina Panthers to win Super Bowl 50.

Ongoing events:
- Zika virus outbreak
- European migrant crisis
Recent deaths:
- Boutros Boutros-Ghali
- Antonin Scalia

On this day...

February 17: Independence Day in Kosovo (2008)

Geraldine Farrar as Madame Butterfly

1801 – The U.S. House of Representatives elected Thomas Jefferson as President and Aaron Burr as Vice President, resolving an electoral tie in the 1800 presidential election.
1859 – The French Navy captured the Citadel of Saigon, a fortress that was manned by 1,000 Nguyễn Dynasty soldiers, en route to conquering Saigon and other regions of southern Vietnam.
1904 – Italian composer Giacomo Puccini's Madama Butterfly (Geraldine Farrar in the title role pictured) premiered at La Scala in Milan, generating negative reviews that forced him to rewrite the opera.
1959 – Vanguard 2, the first weather satellite, was launched to measure cloud cover distribution.
2006 – A massive landslide in the Philippine province of Southern Leyte killed over 1,000 people.

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Today's featured picture

Browsing is a type of herbivory in which a herbivore (or, more narrowly defined, a folivore) feeds on leaves, soft shoots, or fruits of high growing, generally woody, plants such as shrubs. In this photograph, a chital (Axis axis) is attempting to browse at Nagarhole National Park.

Photograph: Yathin S Krishnappa

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