Wikipedia:Main Page history/2014 April 16

Horrible Histories is a children's sketch-comedy adaptation of Terry Deary's long-running book series, produced by Lion Television with Citrus Television, that ran for five 13-episode series on Britain's CBBC from 2009 to 2013. Like the books, it was intended to foster children's interest in British and other Western world history through factual anecdotes retold with a focus on "gross-out"-style humour and comic violence – "history with the nasty bits left in". The producers of the TV series recruited writers and performers with roots in the adult British comedy community. These in turn took a deliberately non-condescending approach, relying instead on such influences as Blackadder and the Monty Python films. A focus on historical accuracy was combined with a comedy style relying heavily on parodies of current UK pop-culture to make those facts more accessible, leading to takeoffs of Masterchef, The Apprentice and Wife Swap among others. The result won numerous domestic and international awards, including two British Comedy Awards and four consecutive Children's BAFTAs (cast at 2011 ceremony pictured), and eventually garnered respect as a classic from viewers of all ages. (Full article...)

Recently featured: Bharattherium – Franklin Peale – Pavle Đurišić

From Wikipedia's new and recently improved content:

• ... that the minor planet Chariklo has a ring system (artist's rendering pictured), making it the smallest body known to be surrounded by rings?
• ... that Filip Fabricius was given an epithet of Hohenfall (literally "of high fall") after he had survived the Second Defenestration of Prague in 1618?
• ... that during the Tucker County Seat War in 1893, over 200 armed men seized Tucker County, West Virginia's court records and courthouse bell from St. George and transferred the county seat to Parsons?
• ... that Pierre Pascau cited a dispute with a coworker over her smoking as the reason for leaving his top-rated radio show?
• ... that wheelchair basketballer Marina Mohnen edged out Olympic gold medallists Britta Heidemann, Marion Rodewald and Oksana Chusovitina to become Cologne's Sportswoman of the Year?
• ... that in 1953, Port Vale had a Steele Curtain?

• The Supreme Court of India recognises a legal third gender for Hijra and transgender individuals.
• A total lunar eclipse (pictured) is visible across the Pacific Ocean and the Americas.
• The Washington Post and The Guardian share the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service, for coverage of the NSA surveillance disclosures.
• Twin bomb blasts in Abuja, Nigeria, kill at least 75 people and injure more than 140 others.
• A wildfire destroys several areas of the Chilean city of Valparaíso, killing at least 15 people.

Recent deaths: Brian Harradine

April 16

• 1847 – New Zealand Wars: A minor Māori chief was accidentally shot by a junior British Army officer in the Petre settlement of New Zealand's North Island, triggering the Wanganui Campaign.
• 1862 – Slavery in Washington, D.C., ended when the District of Columbia Compensated Emancipation Act became law.
• 1917 – Vladimir Lenin (pictured) returned to Petrograd from Switzerland, and joined the Bolshevik movement in Russia.
• 1941 – World War II: After the Axis invasion of Yugoslavia ten days earlier, Ante Pavelić declared a new government in Croatia to be led by the fascist Ustaše.
• 1963 – Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote his Letter from Birmingham Jail in response to an open letter written by white clergymen four days earlier.

More anniversaries: April 15 – April 16 – April 17

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The star cluster Pismis 24 lies in the core of the large emission nebula NGC 6357, which extends one degree on the sky in the direction of the constellation Scorpius. Part of the nebula is ionised by the youngest (bluest) heavy stars in Pismis 24. The intense ultraviolet radiation from the blazing stars heats the gas surrounding the cluster and creates a bubble in NGC 6357. The brightest point of light above the centre of this image is Pismis 24-1, once thought to be the most massive known star but now known to be a binary system.

Photograph: HST/NASA/ESA