Wikipedia:Main Page history/2015 March 11

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Vannevar Bush (1890–1974) was an American engineer, inventor, science administrator, policymaker and public intellectual. He is best known for his work on analog computers, for founding Raytheon, and for the memex, an adjustable microfilm viewer with a structure analogous to that of the World Wide Web. He became Vice President of MIT and Dean of the MIT School of Engineering in 1932, and president of the Carnegie Institution of Washington in 1938. He was chairman of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) and of the National Defense Research Committee (NDRC). During World War II he was director of the Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD), coordinating the defense activities of some 6,000 leading American scientists. As head of NDRC and OSRD, he initiated the Manhattan Project, and ensured that it received top priority from the highest levels of government. In 1945, he published As We May Think in which he predicted that "wholly new forms of encyclopedias will appear, ready made with a mesh of associative trails running through them". This influenced generations of computer scientists, who drew inspiration from his vision. (Full article...)

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... that Florence Nightingale's Parisian friend "Clarkey" (self-portrait pictured) said that it was better to be a galley slave than a woman?
... that during the 1967 Opium War, both traffickers and their mules were bombed indiscriminately?
... that fluorocarbon chemist Henry Aaron Hill was the first African-American president of the American Chemical Society?
... that the "UKIP Calypso" claims that the next British Prime Minister will be Farage?
... that Constance Ellis was the first woman to receive a medical degree from the University of Melbourne?
... that in Money Monster, a disgruntled viewer takes a TV financial adviser (played by George Clooney) hostage after following a stock tip and losing all his money?
... that Choo-tai of Egham, Best Champion at Crufts in 1913, was poisoned and killed later that year, something that was attributed to suffragettes?
... that art thief Vincenzo Pipino would also look for cashmere clothing when he raided a private residence?

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Ten people, including French athletes Camille Muffat, Alexis Vastine and Florence Arthaud, are killed in a mid-air collision between two helicopters in Argentina.
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 58 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.

Ongoing: Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant – War in Ukraine
Recent deaths: Sam Simon

March 11: Independence Day in Lithuania (1990)

222 – Disgusted with Roman emperor Elagabalus's disregard for Roman religious traditions and sexual taboos, the Praetorian Guard assassinated him and his mother Julia Soaemias, mutilated their bodies, and threw them in the Tiber River.
1864 – A crack in the Dale Dyke Dam in Sheffield, England, caused it to fail, and the resulting flood killed 238 people and damaged more than 600 homes.
1879 – Shō Tai, the last king of the Ryūkyū Kingdom, abdicated when the kingdom was annexed by Japan and became Okinawa Prefecture.
1945 – World War II: The Empire of Japan established the Empire of Vietnam, a short-lived puppet state, with Bảo Đại as its ruler.
2006 – Michelle Bachelet (pictured) was inaugurated as the first female President of Chile.

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It is now March 11, 2015 (UTC) – Reload this page

The Littrow projection, created by Joseph Johann Littrow in 1838, is a conformal retroazimuthal map projection. It allows direct measurement of the azimuth from any point on the map to the center.

Map: Strebe, using Geocart

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