Wikipedia:Main Page history/2015 March 10

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Ronnie Lee Gardner (1961–2010) was an American felon who received the death penalty for murder in 1985 and was executed by a firing squad by the state of Utah. In 1984 he killed a bartender during a robbery in Salt Lake City, and the next year killed an attorney in an unsuccessful escape attempt. He was sentenced to life imprisonment for the first murder and received the death penalty for the second. In a series of appeals, defense attorneys presented mitigating evidence of the troubled upbringing of Gardner, who had spent nearly his entire adult life in incarceration. His legal team took the case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which declined to intervene. His execution at Utah State Prison, the first to be carried out by firing squad in the U.S. in 14 years, became a focus of media attention in June 2010. Gardner stated that he sought this method of execution because of his Mormon background. On the day before his execution, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints released a statement clarifying its position on the issue of blood atonement of individuals. The case also attracted debate over capital punishment and whether Gardner's difficult childhood had destined him for a life of violence. (Full article...)

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From Wikipedia's new and recently improved content:

• ... that Manet considered La Nymphe surprise (pictured) one of his most important paintings?
• ... that Laurel Run used to be "of considerable size and importance", but is now a "trickling flow of water"?
• ... that after the Italian cruiser San Giorgio was scuttled in shallow water in 1941, the British commissioned its wreck as an immobile repair ship?
• ... that in 2014 the rapper RedCloud broke the Guiness World Record for longest freestyle rap?
• ... that the film India's Daughter is based on the 2012 Delhi gang rape and murder of a 23-year-old woman?
• ... that the works of Georgette Heyer include her first novel The Black Moth (1921), which she based on a story she wrote for her haemophiliac younger brother?
• ... that in 1891 a single specimen of Underworld windowskate was collected from the California coast, even though this fish is otherwise found only in the Atlantic?
• ... that Romanian literary critic Gheorghe Bogdan-Duică pushed for his country to enter World War I, and found himself deported to Bulgaria once that happened?

• ISIL release videos showing the destruction of the pre-Islamic cities of Hatra (pictured, in 1988) and Nimrud.
• A series of suicide bombings in Maiduguri, Nigeria, kills at least 54 people and wounds more than 140 others.
• NASA's Dawn spacecraft enters orbit around the dwarf planet Ceres.
• The oldest fossil belonging to the genus Homo, dating to the late Pliocene Age around 2.8 million years ago, is discovered in Afar, Ethiopia.
• Pakalitha Mosisili forms a coalition government following a snap election in Lesotho.
• The wreck of the Japanese battleship Musashi is discovered in the Sibuyan Sea of the Philippines.

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Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant – War in Ukraine

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March 10

• 1830 – By royal decree, the Royal Netherlands East Indies Army was established to be the military force maintained by the Netherlands in its colony of the Dutch East Indies.
• 1876 – Alexander Graham Bell made his first successful bi-directional telephone call, saying, "Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you."
• 1965 – Thomas Playford (pictured), Premier of South Australia, left office after 27 years, the longest term of any democratically elected leader in the history of Australia.
• 1975 – Ho Chi Minh Campaign: North Vietnam began its final push for victory over South Vietnam with an attack on Ban Me Thuot.
• 2005 – Tung Chee-hwa, the first Chief Executive of Hong Kong, announced his resignation following widespread dissatisfaction with his leadership.

More anniversaries: March 9 – March 10 – March 11

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Ane Brun (b. 1976) is a Norwegian songwriter, guitarist and vocalist. She has recorded eight albums, starting in 2003 with Spending Time with Morgan.

Photo: Benoît Derrier; edit: Keraunoscopia