Wikipedia:Main Page history/2013 July 12

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From today's featured article

The Sunbeam Tiger is a high-performance V8 version of the British Rootes Group's Sunbeam Alpine roadster, designed in part by American car designer and racing driver Carroll Shelby. Shelby had carried out a similar V8 conversion on the AC Cobra, and hoped to win the contract to produce the Tiger at his facility in America. Rootes decided instead to contract the assembly work to Jensen at West Bromwich in England, and pay Shelby a royalty on every car produced. Two major versions were built: the Series I (1964–67) was fitted with the 260 cu in (4.3 L) Ford V8; the Series II, of which only 633 were built, was fitted with the larger Ford 289 cu in (4.7 L) engine. Two prototype and extensively modified versions of the Series I competed in the 1964 24 Hours of Le Mans, fitted with the larger engine, but neither completed the race. For two years the Tiger was the American Hot Rod Association's national record holder over a quarter-mile drag strip. Production ended in 1967 soon after the Rootes Group was taken over by Chrysler, who did not have a suitable engine to replace the Ford V8. Owing to the ease and affordability of modifying the Tiger, there are few surviving cars in standard form. (Full article...)

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Did you know...

From Wikipedia's newest content:

... that in addition to painting The Ruins of Holyrood Chapel (pictured), Louis Daguerre built a 70-ft (21 m) wide diorama of the painting's subject?

... that Duke Ellington praised pianist Maurice Rocco's sophisticated performance style?

... that the film The Private Affairs of Bel Ami showed the 1945 painting The Temptation of St. Anthony by Max Ernst on-screen?

... that in 2012, Alberto Suárez Laso won the Asturian Sports Press Association award for best male athlete?

... that despite a 1985 law mandating its creation in every town and city, by 2006 only one city in the Philippines had an official freedom park before the Supreme Court ruled on its constitutionality?

... that the groom for the first wedding in Prescott, W. Claude Jones, abandoned his bride less than six months after the event?

... that in a 1989 promotional stunt, Bar/None distributed deprecated, irrelevant 8-track tapes with labels advertising They Might Be Giants' single "Purple Toupee"?

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In the news

Widespread flooding in China causes at least 46 deaths and the evacuation of more than 220,000 people.

Ten bombs are detonated at one of the holiest sites in Buddhism, the Mahabodhi Temple complex (pictured) in India, injuring five people.

More than fifty supporters of deposed Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi are killed in clashes with the military in Cairo.

In tennis, Marion Bartoli wins the women's singles and Andy Murray wins the men's singles at the Wimbledon Championships.

Asiana Airlines Flight 214 crashes while landing at San Francisco International Airport, killing two people.

A runaway fuel train derails in Lac-Mégantic, Quebec, killing at least twenty-four people and destroying at least thirty buildings in the town's core.

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On this day...

July 12: Independence Day in Kiribati (1979) and São Tomé and Príncipe (1975); The Twelfth in Northern Ireland

1493 – The Nuremberg Chronicle, one of the best-documented early printed books, was first published.

1543 – King Henry VIII of England married Catherine Parr, his sixth and last wife, at Hampton Court Palace.

1943 – World War II: German and Soviet forces engaged each other at the Battle of Prokhorovka, one of the largest tank battles in military history (Soviet T-34 tank pictured).

1963 – In Gorton, England, 16-year-old Pauline Reade disappeared, the first victim of Ian Brady and Myra Hindley in the Moors murders.

2007 – Two US Army AH-64 Apache helicopters conducted a series of air-to-ground attacks in Baghdad; classified cockpit gunsight footage was released to the Internet in 2010.

More anniversaries: July 11 – July 12 – July 13

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It is now July 12, 2013 (UTC) – Reload this page

Today's featured picture

Wheelchair basketball is basketball played by people in wheelchairs and is considered one of the major disabled sports practiced. Depicted here is a game from the first round of the 2012 Euroleague tournament, showing players from Toulouse (in red) and Roma (in white).

Photograph: Pierre Selim

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