Wikipedia:Main Page history/2021 April 19b

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From today's featured article

League of Legends is a multiplayer online battle arena video game developed and published by Riot Games and released in 2009. Two teams of five players battle in player-versus-player combat, with each player controlling a character with a unique play style and abilities. At launch, the game was generally well-received; later critical reappraisals, arising as a result of the game's long lifespan, have trended positively, noting the regular content updates. In 2019 the game routinely recorded 8 million concurrent players, and its popularity and longevity have led to various tie-ins, including virtual groups like K/DA, narrative collaborations with Marvel Comics, spin-off video games, and an upcoming animated series. The game is played professionally, and is frequently cited as the world's largest esport; the 2019 League of Legends World Championship had over 100 million unique viewers, peaking at a concurrent 44 million viewers, with a minimum prize pool of US$2.5 million. (Full article...)

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Did you know ...

Chava Shapiro, circa 1904

... that Chava Shapiro (pictured) published the first feminist manifesto in Hebrew, lamenting the absence of women's voices in the language's literature?
... that runner-up Ronnie O'Sullivan almost withdrew from the 2021 Tour Championship after sending his cue stick for repair twice before the event?
... that Two-Way Mirror, the first full biography of English poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning in 30 years, portrays the poet as a daring Victorian sensation and dismisses her image as an invalid?
... that Luigi Fugazy was described as "perhaps the most eminent padrone in the United States"?
... that the Saugatuck Chain Ferry is believed to be the last operating hand-cranked chain ferry in the United States?
... that the fictional character Howard Bellamy from the British soap opera Doctors was based on a real-life army captain who quit his job to run a doctor's surgery?
... that Plunton Castle, although well defended by gun loops, a ditch and a 9-foot (2.7 m) wall, had a very rare security flaw in the arrangement of its ground-floor rooms?
... that after he died, American Revolutionary War general and physician William Irvine was buried three different times at three different locations?

In the news

Ingenuity

On Mars, NASA's helicopter Ingenuity (pictured) makes the first powered flight on another planet.
In South Africa, a fire on Table Mountain, Cape Town, destroys historic monuments including Mostert's Mill and the University of Cape Town's special collections library.
Guillermo Lasso is elected President of Ecuador.
At the British Academy Film Awards, Nomadland wins four awards, including Best Film.
In golf, Hideki Matsuyama wins the Masters Tournament.

On this day

April 19: Feast day of Saint Ælfheah of Canterbury (Catholicism, Anglicanism); Patriots' Day in various U.S. states (2021)

Mae West

797 – Byzantine emperor Constantine VI was captured, blinded, and imprisoned by the supporters of his mother Irene.
1809 – War of the Fifth Coalition: The French won a hard-fought victory over Austria in Lower Bavaria when their opponents withdrew from the field of battle that evening.
1927 – American actress Mae West (pictured) was sentenced to ten days in jail for "corrupting the morals of youth" for her play Sex.
1971 – The first space station, Salyut 1, was launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome near Tyuratam, Kazakh SSR, USSR.
1984 – "Advance Australia Fair", written by Scottish-born composer Peter Dodds McCormick, officially replaced "God Save the Queen" as Australia's national anthem.

George St Lo (b. 1655)
Sarah Bagley (b. 1806)
Michel Roux (b. 1941)

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From today's featured list

The logo header of Super Mario RPG

The Mario franchise has deviated into a variety of role-playing games that have been published by Nintendo and released exclusively for their video game consoles. The first game, Super Mario RPG, was developed by Square and released in 1996; the game was met with critical acclaim, and became the inspiration for the Paper Mario and Mario & Luigi spinoff series, developed by Intelligent Systems and AlphaDream respectively. The Paper Mario series was well-received when it began with Paper Mario in 2000, but has since been shifted to that of an action-adventure series; beginning with Superstar Saga in 2003, numerous titles in the Mario & Luigi series were met with critical acclaim, but AlphaDream declared bankruptcy in 2019. Three other one-off titles, such as Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle in 2017, have also been released. (Full list...)

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Today's featured picture

The Jawi alphabet is an Arabic-based writing system used to write the Malay language and several other Southeast Asian languages. This photograph shows an 1803 Netherlands Indies gulden silver rupee coin, minted at the Java Mint in the Dutch East Indies, featuring Jawi script; the image of the reverse (on the right) is inverted.

Coin credit: Java Mint; photographed by Heritage Auctions

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