Wikipedia:Main Page history/2020 August 2

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Hiromichi Tanaka

Trials of Mana is a 1995 action role-playing game developed and published by Square for the Super Famicom. The third installment in the Mana series, it follows three heroes in a high fantasy world as they attempt to claim the Mana Sword. The game features three lengthy main plotlines, a choice of six main characters, and a wide range of character classes and skills. It was designed by series creator Koichi Ishii, directed by veteran Square designer Hiromichi Tanaka (pictured), and produced by Tetsuhisa Tsuruzono, with artwork by Nobuteru Yūki and music by Hiroki Kikuta. The game was published in Japan, and an English fan translation appeared in 1999. It was first officially released in English in a 2017 port for the Nintendo Switch. Trials of Mana received considerable acclaim from reviewers for its graphics and gameplay, but some found the characters and plotlines clichéd. In April 2020, a 3D remake of the same name was released for Nintendo Switch, Microsoft Windows, and PlayStation 4. (Full article...)

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Did you know ...

Lake Poway

... that the bond issue for building Lake Poway (pictured) had to be voted on three times before it was approved?
... that the novel The Silent Patient was inspired by the Athenian tragedy Alcestis?
... that after nearly 40 years as a prolific researcher and professor of demography at Makerere University in Uganda, James P. M. Ntozi was forced to retire—and became a farmer?
... that after the American Revolutionary War, only five of First Presbyterian Church of Newtown's congregants remained, so a nearby Dutch church took them in?
... that according to Naraporn Chan-o-cha, the wife of the current prime minister of Thailand, Prayut Chan-o-cha, she is responsible for his clothes, make-up, and haircut?
... that NCT Dream performed songs from their album Reload on the world's first paid online concert Beyond LIVE?
... that Apollo flight director Pete Frank was a finalist for NASA Astronaut Group 5?
... that the South African motorsport of spinning began as a funeral ritual in which a car was stolen and driven in circles to honor the deceased?

In the news

COVID-19 pandemic

Najib Razak

Former Malaysian prime minister Najib Razak (pictured) is found guilty on all seven charges in the first trial related to the 1MDB scandal.
A series of attacks over disputed farmland in Darfur, Sudan, leaves more than eighty people dead and several villages destroyed.
Three individuals are arrested for involvement with a security breach at Twitter that resulted in many prominent accounts promoting a bitcoin scam.

On this day

August 2

Drawing of the interior of the Tower Subway

1100 – While on a hunting trip in the New Forest, William II of England was killed by an arrow through the lung loosed by one of his own men.
1870 – One of the world's earliest underground tube railways opened in the Tower Subway (interior depicted), a tunnel beneath the River Thames in London.
1932 – At the California Institute of Technology, American physicist Carl David Anderson proved the existence of antimatter with the discovery of the positron, for which he would receive the 1936 Nobel Prize in Physics.
2007 – Raúl Iturriaga, a former deputy director of the Chilean secret police, was captured in Viña del Mar after having been on the run following a kidnapping conviction.

Thomas Grey (d. 1415)
Marija Bursać (b. 1920)
Roy Cohn (d. 1986)

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Today's featured picture

The spotted trunkfish (Lactophrys bicaudalis) is a species of ray-finned fish in the family Ostraciidae, native to the Caribbean Sea and parts of the western Atlantic Ocean. Members of this family are known as boxfishes because they have a hard outer covering consisting of hexagonal, plate-like scales fused together into a solid, triangular or box-like carapace. Because of this casing, the body of the spotted trunkfish is not flexible, and locomotion is normally limited to slow movements performed by rippling its dorsal and anal fins and gently beating its pectoral fins. If faster motion is required, it can additionally use its caudal fin for propulsion. This spotted trunkfish was photographed at a depth of about 40 ft (12 m) at Bari Reef, Bonaire.

Photograph credit: Betty Wills

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