Wikipedia:Main Page history/2014 June 3

Jefferson Davis (1808–1889) was President of the Confederate States of America during the Civil War. Born in Kentucky, he graduated from the U.S. Military Academy and had a career as a soldier, fighting in the Mexican–American War. As a plantation owner, he employed slave labor as did many of his peers in the South, and supported slavery. He served as Secretary of War and U.S. senator, arguing against secession, but agreeing that each state had the right to secede. At the beginning of the Civil War in 1861, Davis was chosen as President of the Confederate States. He took personal charge of the Confederate war plans but was unable to defeat the larger, more powerful and better organized Union. He is often blamed for contributing to the fall of the Confederacy. His diplomatic efforts failed to gain recognition from any foreign country and he paid little attention to the collapsing economy. At the end of the war in 1865, he was captured and imprisoned; after his release he entered private life. He wrote a memoir, The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, eventually became a Civil War hero to many white Southerners and, in later life, encouraged reconciliation with the North. (Full article...)

Recently featured: Belle Vue Zoological Gardens – Four Freedoms (Norman Rockwell) – Jane Joseph

From Wikipedia's new and recently improved content:

• ... that nasal strips are worn both by race horses (California Chrome pictured) and by human athletes?
• ... that despite Frederick Law Olmsted's wishes, Francis Allen had Vassar College's Lathrop House built directly north of Strong House?
• ... that Sessue Hayakawa, who played the role of Tsuru Aoki's father in the film The Wrath of the Gods, married her the same year the film was released?
• ... that Fishergate Baptist Church in Preston, Lancashire, contains four wheel windows?
• ... that T. Veerabhadram was the Communist Party of India (Marxist) candidate with the most votes outside Kerala and West Bengal in the 1998 Indian general election?
• ... that while Mexican drug lord Inés Coronel Barreras was officially listed as a cattle rancher in Durango, the neighbors claimed he was growing marijuana and opium poppies?
• ... that the Kota Kinabalu City Mosque is home to a fish farm?

• Telangana officially becomes the 29th state of India.
• Peter Mutharika is elected President of Malawi.
• The leaders of Russia, Kazakhstan, and Belarus sign a treaty to form a Eurasian Economic Union.
• Abdel Fattah el-Sisi (pictured) is elected President of Egypt.
• Ignatius Aphrem II is enthroned as the Syriac Orthodox Patriarch of Antioch.
• American author and civil rights activist Maya Angelou dies at the age of 86.
• Petro Poroshenko is elected President of Ukraine.
• In motorsport, Ryan Hunter-Reay wins the Indianapolis 500.

Ongoing: Ukrainian conflict – Balkan flooding

Recent deaths: Azlan Shah of Perak – Wojciech Jaruzelski

June 3: Feast day of Saint Charles Lwanga and the Uganda Martyrs (Roman Catholic Church, Church of England, Lutheranism)

• 1658 – Pope Alexander VII appointed François de Laval (pictured) as vicar apostolic of New France.
• 1839 – Qing government official Lin Zexu catalysed the First Opium War after ordering the destruction of nearly 1.2 million kg (2.6 million lbs) of opium in Humen, China.
• 1888 – American writer Ernest Thayer's baseball poem "Casey at the Bat" was first published in the San Francisco Examiner.
• 1940 – Franz Rademacher, a Nazi government official, proposed that Madagascar should be made available for the resettlement of the Jews of Europe.
• 2012 – Dana Air Flight 992, a passenger flight from Abuja to Lagos, Nigeria, suffered dual engine failure and crashed into a building, resulting in the deaths of all 153 on board and ten more on the ground.

More anniversaries: June 2 – June 3 – June 4

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Three structures on Matanaka Farm (from left to right: the granary, privy and schoolhouse), the oldest surviving farm buildings in New Zealand that are still in their original positions. Established by the Australian whaler Johnny Jones in 1838, the construction of the farm's structures began in the 1840. After passing through several families, the site is now owned and administered by the New Zealand Historic Places Trust.

Photograph: Karora