Wikipedia:Main Page history/2020 March 7

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From today's featured article

I-675 at Saginaw, Michigan

Interstate 675 (I-675) is a 7.7-mile-long (12.4 km) auxiliary Interstate Highway, state trunkline highway and loop route in the US state of Michigan. Splitting from I-75 and US Highway 23, which run north concurrently along the eastern side of Saginaw, I-675 heads west into the downtown area and spans the Saginaw River on the Henry G. Marsh Bridge. After an interchange with M-58, the Interstate turns northward, then runs northeasterly to connect back to I-75. The Marsh Bridge was constructed as an alternative to the Zilwaukee Bridge, which is just southeast of this junction on I-75 over the Saginaw; the I-75 bridge was until 1988 a drawbridge that would impede traffic on the freeway for up to four hours at a time. Construction of I-675 started in 1969 and the freeway opened in 1971. Sections near downtown were reconstructed from 2009 through 2011 to update one of the freeway's interchanges and to rebuild the Marsh Bridge. (Full article...)

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Did you know ...

Gessner Harrison

... that when Gessner Harrison (pictured) was a student at the University of Virginia, he declined Thomas Jefferson's invitation to Sunday dinner, saying that it would be a violation of the Sabbath?
... that extensive disturbances in the crust beneath the Philippines produce many volcanoes and earthquakes?
... that the 2000 Canadian hip-hop song "Money Jane" is credited with launching Sean Paul's international music career?
... that "The Country Without a Post Office" describes Kashmir as "a land of doomed addresses", because postal services were stopped for seven months during an armed uprising?
... that in 1953, American scientist Winston Price isolated the first rhinovirus, the most prevalent cause of the common cold?
... that Jon Favreau, creator of the Star Wars television series The Mandalorian, also voiced the character of Paz Vizla?
... that after Indian-American lawyer Sakharam Ganesh Pandit represented Bhagat Singh Thind in a 1923 U.S. Supreme Court case, the U.S. government attempted to revoke his citizenship?
... that Piazza Scossacavalli in Rome kept its cinquecento atmosphere for nearly 400 years?

In the news

Yvonne Farrell

Yvonne Farrell (pictured) and Shelley McNamara win the Pritzker Architecture Prize.
In the United States, a tornado outbreak hits four counties around Nashville, Tennessee, killing twenty-five people.
Muhyiddin Yassin becomes the prime minister of Malaysia following a political crisis which led to the resignation of his predecessor, Mahathir Mohamad.
The United States and the Taliban sign an agreement which establishes a framework for ending the War in Afghanistan.

On this day

March 7: Feast day of Saints Perpetua and Felicity (Catholicism, Anglicanism, Lutheranism)

Police attacking civil rights activists outside Selma, Alabama

1277 – Bishop Étienne Tempier promulgated a condemnation of 219 heretical propositions that were being discussed at the University of Paris.
1573 – A peace treaty brought the Ottoman–Venetian War to an end, ceding Cyprus from the Republic of Venice to the Ottoman Empire.
1900 – The German ocean liner SS Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse became the first ship to send a wireless telegraph message to an onshore receiver.
1945 – World War II: At the beginning of the Battle of Remagen, Allied forces unexpectedly captured the Ludendorff Bridge, which possibly hastened the war's conclusion.
1965 – Unarmed civil rights activists marching from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, were attacked by police (pictured) on "Bloody Sunday".

Ewald Christian von Kleist (b. 1715) · Harriet Jacobs (d. 1897) · Hideki Noda (b. 1969)

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Today's featured picture

The black-necked stilt (Himantopus mexicanus) is a species of shorebird in the family Recurvirostridae, inhabiting wetlands and coastlines in North, Central and South America. Adults average about 36 cm (14 in) in length, with black-and-white plumage and a thin, straight, black bill. The legs are long and pink, and there is a white spot above the eye that distinguishes the species from the white-backed stilt.

Seen here near Corte Madera, California, the black-necked stilt forages by probing and gleaning on mudflats, grassy marshes and lakesides, as well as in shallow waters near the shore; the diet consists mainly of insects and their larvae, crustaceans, other arthropods, mollusks, tadpoles and small fish. The species nests in colonies that may have several dozen pairs spread out loosely, with the birds defending an extensive perimeter around groups of nests, patrolling in cooperation with their neighbors.

Photograph credit: Frank Schulenburg

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