Wikipedia:Main Page history/2016 February 16

Fort Yellowstone was established as a U.S. Army cavalry post in 1891 at Mammoth Hot Springs in Yellowstone National Park. The army administered the park from then until 1918 when it was transferred to the newly created National Park Service. The first structures (1891–1897) were mainly wood-framed buildings in what has been called the "cottage style", some with Colonial Revival elements. Later structures (1908–1913), including the current park headquarters and the Horace Albright Visitor Center, were primarily built from locally quarried sandstone, and many of these are still in use as administrative offices, residences for National Park Service employees, and museums. The army left a legacy of policies and practices that served as precedents for the National Park Service's management of national parks, including wildlife management, protection of natural features, and prosecution of illegal activities. A version of the campaign hat worn by members of the army during the last years of their management of Yellowstone National Park was adopted by the National Park Service's Park Rangers. (Full article...)

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February 16: Statehood Day in Lithuania (1918)

• 1270 – Livonian Crusade: In the Battle of Karuse, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania achieved a decisive victory over the Livonian Order on the frozen surface of the Baltic Sea.
• 1804 – United States Navy Lieutenant Stephen Decatur led a raid to destroy the captured USS Philadelphia in Tripoli, denying her use to the Barbary States in the First Barbary War.
• 1918 – The Council of Lithuania signed the Act of Independence of Lithuania, proclaiming the restoration of an independent Lithuania governed by democratic principles, despite the presence of German troops in the country during World War I.
• 1946 – The Sikorsky S-51 (pictured), the first helicopter to be built for civilian instead of military use, made its first flight.
• 1983 – The Ash Wednesday bushfires burned 513,979 acres (2,080 km²) in South Australia and 518,921 acres (2,100 km²) in Victoria, killing 75 people and injuring 2,676 others.

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SMS Kaiser Wilhelm II was the second ship of the Kaiser Friedrich III class of pre-dreadnought battleships. Commissioned into the German fleet in 1902, she was armed with a main battery of four 24-centimeter (9.4 in) guns and powered by triple expansion engines. Initially the flagship, she was replaced by the SMS Deutschland in 1906 and decommissioned. With the outbreak of World War I in August 1914, Kaiser Wilhelm II was brought back into active duty as a coastal defense ship, but was withdrawn in February 1915. The ship was stricken from the navy list in 1918 and sold for scrap in the early 1920s.

Lithograph: Hugo Graf; restoration: Adam Cuerden

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