User:Parcly Taxel/sandbox
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12 May TFAs[edit]
Brian Close is the youngest man ever to play cricket for England. He went on to play 22 Test matches for England, captaining them seven times, winning six times and drawing once. Close also captained Yorkshire to four county championship titles, the main honour English county cricket clubs play for. He later went on to captain Somerset, where he is widely credited with turning Somerset round to a hard-playing team that helped mould Viv Richards and Ian Botham into the cricketing greats they became. Yet despite his successes, Close was dogged by controversy throughout his career. He was serving a sentence of being "confined to barracks" during his National Service when called up for his first international tour, sacked by England for timewasting, and sacked by Yorkshire for being against one-day cricket and not giving enough support to younger cricketers. He went on to tour apartheid South Africa and white-minority controlled Rhodesia. In short, Close was known as a cricketing gambler; he was prepared to take risks and to court controversy throughout his career.
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Perfect Dark is a first-person shooter video game for the Nintendo 64 game console. The game was developed by Rare, creators of the multimillion-selling GoldenEye 007, an earlier first-person shooter with which Perfect Dark shares many gameplay features. The game was first released in North America in May 2000, where it was greeted with critical acclaim; PAL and Japanese releases followed soon afterwards. The game features a single-player mode consisting of seventeen missions in which the player assumes the role of special agent Joanna Dark, an operative for the fictional Carrington Institute, as she attempts to foil a conspiracy by rival corporation dataDyne. It also includes a range of multiplayer options, including co-operative and "counter-operative" modes in addition to traditional deathmatch settings. Technically, it is one of the most advanced games developed for the N64, with optional high-resolution graphics and Dolby Surround Sound. (continued...)
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The Eurovision Song Contest is an annual competition held among active member countries of the European Broadcasting Union, in which participating countries each submit a song to be performed on live television; then proceed to cast votes for the other countries' songs, in order to find the most popular song in the competition. Each country participates via one of their national EBU-member television stations, whose task it is to select a singer and a song to go forward to represent the country in the international competition. The Contest has been broadcast every year since its inauguration in 1956, and is one of the longest-running television programmes in the world. It is also one of the most-watched non-sporting events in the world, with audience figures having been quoted in recent years as anything between 100 million and 600 million internationally. The Contest is historically known for being mainly a bastion of formulaic, orchestrated pop music. However it has featured a vast, diverse array of songs, including such musical genres as Arab, Balkan, Celtic music, Dance, Folk, Israeli, Greek, Latin, Metal, Nordic, Pop-rap, Rock, and Turkish. (more...)
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Battlefield Earth: A Saga of the Year 3000 is a 2000 American film adaptation of the novel Battlefield Earth by L. Ron Hubbard. It was a commercial and critical disaster and has been widely criticized as one of the worst films ever made. Starring John Travolta, Forest Whitaker and Barry Pepper, the film depicts an Earth that has been under the rule of the alien Psychlos for 1,000 years and tells the story of the rebellion that develops when the Psychlos attempt to use the surviving humans as gold miners. Travolta, a long-time Scientologist, had sought for many years to make a film of the novel by Hubbard, the founder of Scientology. After a long search, he obtained funding from Franchise Pictures, an independent production company that specialized in rescuing stars' pet projects. However, Battlefield Earth received abysmal reviews on its release and failed to recoup its costs at the box office. Franchise Pictures was later sued by its investors and was bankrupted after it emerged that it had fraudulently overstated the film's budget by $31 million. (more...)
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The Victoria Cross for New Zealand is a military decoration awarded for valour "in the face of the enemy" to members of the New Zealand Armed Forces. It may be awarded to a person of any rank in any service and civilians under military command, and is presented to the recipient by the Governor-General of New Zealand during an investiture held at Government House, Wellington. As the highest award for gallantry in New Zealand it takes precedence over other postnominals and medals. The original Victoria Cross was introduced in 1856 by Queen Victoria to reward acts of valour during the Crimean War. The Victoria Cross for New Zealand was established in 1999 and was awarded for the first (and so far only) time on 2 July 2007, to Corporal Bill (Willie) Apiata for actions in 2004. Originally all Commonwealth personnel were issued with the same award, but in the last 50 years, Commonwealth countries have introduced separate award systems; three of these retain "Victoria Cross" as part of the name of the highest award for gallantry. New Zealand created a new award system that replaced several Commonwealth Honours with separate awards. (more...)
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Manitoba is a Canadian prairie province which was brought into Confederation in 1870 after the Red River Rebellion. The area has been inhabited for thousands of years, with European contact made in the 17th century. The province has over 110,000 lakes, and has a largely continental climate due to its mostly flat topography. Agriculture, found especially in the fertile southern and western parts of the province, is vital to its economy; other major industries are transportation, manufacturing, mining, forestry, energy, and tourism. The political and cultural capital, Winnipeg, is home to four of the province's five universities, all four of its major professional sports teams, and most of its cultural events. The city is also a transportation and military hub, hosting a busy international airport and the regional headquarters of NORAD. The province has a population of over one million; its largest ethnic group is English, but it has a significant Franco-Manitoban minority and a growing aboriginal population. The province's name, meaning "strait of the spirit" or "lake of the prairies", is derived from the languages of its early aboriginal inhabitants. (more...)
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Hurricane Rick was the second-most intense Pacific hurricane on record and the strongest ever to form during October. Developing south of Mexico on October 15, 2009, Rick traversed an area favoring rapid intensification, allowing it to become a hurricane within 24 hours of being declared a tropical depression. An eye began to form during the afternoon of October 16; once fully formed, the storm underwent another period of rapid strengthening. During the afternoon of October 17, the storm attained Category 5 status on the Saffir–Simpson Hurricane Scale. Several hours later, Rick attained its peak intensity as the second-strongest Pacific hurricane on record with winds of 180 mph (285 km/h). After maintaining this intensity for several hours, Rick began to weaken in response to a combination of an eyewall replacement cycle and increasing wind shear. On October 21, Rick quickly moved northeast, brushing the tip of Baja California Sur before making landfall near Mazatlán with winds of 55 mph (90 km/h). Several hours after moving inland, the final advisory from the NHC was issued as the storm weakened to a tropical depression and dissipated. Overall, the damage from Rick was significantly less than what was initially anticipated. Throughout Mexico, three people were killed by the storm, one in Oaxaca and two in Baja California Sur. (more...)
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Katharine Hepburn (1907–2003) was an American actress of film, stage, and television. Known for her headstrong independence and spirited personality, Hepburn's career as a Hollywood leading lady spanned more than 60 years. She won a record four Academy Awards, and in 1999 was named by the American Film Institute as Hollywood's top female legend. Hepburn began acting in college, and spent four years in the theatre before entering films in 1932. She became an instant star, but after a series of unsuccessful films was named "box office poison". The Philadelphia Story revived her career, and she subsequently formed a popular alliance with Spencer Tracy that lasted 25 years. In middle age Hepburn found a niche playing spinsters, such as in The African Queen, and became a Shakespearean stage actress. She continued to work into old age, making her final screen appearance in 1994 at the age of 87. Hepburn is remembered as an important cultural figure, as she came to epitomize the "modern woman" in 20th-century America and helped change perceptions of women. (more...)
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Lady Grange (1679–1745) was the wife of James Erskine, Lord Grange, a Scottish lawyer with Jacobite sympathies. After 25 years of marriage and nine children, the Granges separated acrimoniously. When Lady Grange produced letters that she claimed were evidence of his treasonable plottings against the Hanoverian government in London, her husband had her kidnapped from her home in Edinburgh on the night of 22 January 1732. She was incarcerated in various remote locations on the western seaboard of Scotland, including the Monach Isles, Skye and the distant islands of St Kilda. Lady Grange's father was convicted of murder when she was about 10 years old and she is known to have had a violent temper; initially her absence seems to have caused little comment. No action was ever taken on her behalf by any of her children, the eldest of whom would have been in their early twenties when she was abducted. News of her plight eventually reached Edinburgh however, and an unsuccessful rescue attempt was undertaken by her lawyer, Thomas Hope of Rankeillor. She died in captivity, after being effectively imprisoned for 13 years. Her life has been remembered in poetry, prose and a play. (Full article...)
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Sigi Schmid (born 1953) is a German-American soccer coach. Born in Tübingen, West Germany, he moved to the United States with his family when he was a child. He played college soccer as a midfielder from 1972 to 1975 at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). He coached his former college team between 1980 and 1999 and became one of the most successful collegiate coaches of all time. The UCLA Bruins made 16 consecutive playoff appearances from 1983 to 1998, winning the national championship in 1985, 1990, and 1997. Schmid also worked with US Soccer throughout the 1990s. Schmid has coached the Los Angeles Galaxy and the Columbus Crew in Major League Soccer (MLS). He became the head coach of Seattle Sounders FC in 2009. Throughout his career, Schmid has received praise from critics for his ability to identify new talent. His defensive tactics are also highly regarded in the press, although their deployment in his final two seasons with Los Angeles led directly to the termination of his contract. Despite never having played soccer at a professional level, he has the most coaching wins in MLS history, and was the recipient of the MLS Coach of the Year Award in 1999 and 2008. (Full article...)
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Batman: Arkham Asylum is a 2009 action-adventure video game based on the DC Comics superhero. Written by veteran Batman comics writer Paul Dini (pictured), it was developed by Rocksteady Studios and published by Eidos Interactive in conjunction with Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 video game consoles and Microsoft Windows. In the main storyline, Batman's archenemy, the Joker, instigates an elaborate plot to seize control of Arkham Asylum and trap Batman inside with many of his incarcerated foes. Kevin Conroy, Mark Hamill, and Arleen Sorkin reprised their roles as Batman, the Joker, and his sidekick Harley Quinn respectively. The game is presented in third-person perspective with a primary focus on Batman's combat and stealth abilities, detective skills, and gadgets that can be used in combat and exploration. The game received critical acclaim—particularly for its narrative—and won several awards, including Best Action Adventure game, Best Game, and Game of the Year from different media outlets. It held the Guinness World Record for "Most Critically Acclaimed Superhero Game Ever". Arkham Asylum's success launched a series of Batman: Arkham sequels, beginning in October 2011 with Batman: Arkham City. (Full article...)
British scientists were crucial to the success of the Manhattan Project, which developed the first atomic bombs during World War II. After Rudolf Peierls and Otto Frisch at the University of Birmingham calculated that a small sphere of pure uranium-235 could explode with the power of thousands of tons of dynamite, their memorandum led to Britain's own atomic bomb project. This project shared research with the US, but was eventually subsumed by the Manhattan Project under the 1943 Quebec Agreement. A British mission led by the Australian physicist Mark Oliphant assisted in the development of electromagnetic separation processes for enriching uranium; Wallace Akers led a similar mission assisting with gaseous diffusion. James Chadwick (pictured) was the head of a British team of distinguished scientists working on bomb design at the Los Alamos Laboratory that included Niels Bohr, Peierls, Frisch, Geoffrey Taylor, and James Tuck, as well as Klaus Fuchs, who was later revealed to be a Soviet atomic spy. American and British cooperation ended with the Atomic Energy Act of 1946. In October 1952, Britain became the third country to test an independently developed nuclear weapon. (Full article...)
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The Kuiper belt is a circumstellar disc in the Solar System extending beyond the orbit of Neptune, at 30 to 50 astronomical units from the Sun. It is similar to the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, but far larger—20 times as wide and 20 to 200 times as massive. Like the asteroid belt, it consists mainly of small bodies that are remnants from the Solar System's formation. Many asteroids are composed primarily of rock and metal, but most Kuiper belt objects are composed largely of frozen volatiles such as methane, ammonia and water. The disc was named after Dutch-American astronomer Gerard Kuiper, though he did not predict its existence. Some of the Solar System's moons, such as Neptune's Triton and Saturn's Phoebe, are thought to have originated in the region. It is home to three officially recognized dwarf planets: Haumea, Makemake, and Pluto, the largest and most massive member of the Kuiper belt. Originally considered a planet, Pluto was reclassified as a dwarf planet in 2006. (Full article...)
Part of the Solar System featured topic.
Heterodontosaurus was a dinosaur of the Early Jurassic, 200–190 million years ago. It was named in 1962 after a skull fossil was discovered in South Africa. The genus name means "different toothed lizard", in reference to its unusual heterodont dentition, including small, incisor-like teeth in the upper jaw, followed by long, canine-like tusks. Additional specimens have been found, including an almost complete skeleton in 1966. Though it was a small dinosaur, Heterodontosaurus was one of the largest members of its family, reaching between 1.18 m (3.9 ft)* and possibly 1.75 m (5.7 ft)* in length, and weighing between 2 and 10 kg (4.4 and 22.0 lb). The body was short with a long tail. The five-fingered forelimbs were long and relatively robust; the hind-limbs were long, slender, and had four toes. The skull was elongated, narrow, and triangular when viewed from the side. The front of the jaws were covered in a keratinous beak. (Full article...)
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Jules Massenet (12 May 1842 – 13 August 1912) was a French composer of the Romantic era best known for his operas. The two most frequently staged are Manon (1884) and Werther (1892). After winning the country's top prize in music, the Prix de Rome, in 1863, he composed prolifically in many genres. He wrote more than 40 stage works in a wide variety of styles, from opéra-comique to grand-scale depictions of classical myths, romantic comedies, and lyric dramas. He also composed oratorios, ballets, cantatas, orchestral works, incidental music, piano pieces, and songs. Massenet had a good sense of the theatre and of what would succeed with the Parisian public, and he became the most popular composer of opera in France in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Although critics do not rank him among operatic geniuses such as Mozart, Verdi and Wagner, his operas are now widely accepted as well-crafted and intelligent products of the Belle Époque. (Full article...)
The Superliner is a type of bilevel intercity railroad passenger car used by Amtrak, the national rail passenger carrier in the United States. The design was based on Budd's Hi-Level vehicles, employed by the Santa Fe Railway on its El Capitan trains. Pullman-Standard built 284 cars, known as Superliner I (lounge pictured), from 1975 to 1981; Bombardier Transportation built 195, known as Superliner II, from 1991 to 1996. Car types include coaches, dining cars, lounges, and sleeping cars. Most passenger spaces are on the upper level, which features a row of windows on both sides. Boarding is on the lower level; passengers climb up a center stairwell to access the upper level. The first Superliner I cars entered service in February 1979, with deliveries continuing through 1981. Amtrak assigned the cars to both long-distance and short-distance trains in the Western United States. The first permanent assignment, in October 1979, was to the Chicago–Seattle Empire Builder. (Full article...)