Wikipedia:Today's featured article
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Today's featured article  Each day, a summary (of between 909 and 1009 characters) of one of Wikipedia's featured articles (FAs) appears at the top of the Main Page as Today's Featured Article (TFA). The Main Page is viewed about 4.7 million times daily. TFAs are scheduled by the TFA coordinators: Wehwalt, Gog the Mild and Z1720. WP:TFAA displays the current month, with easy navigation to other months. If you notice an error in an upcoming TFA summary, please feel free to fix it yourself; if the mistake is in today's or tomorrow's summary, please leave a message at WP:ERRORS so an administrator can fix it. Articles can be nominated for TFA at the TFA requests page, and articles with a date connection within the next year can be suggested at the TFA pending page. Feel free to bring questions and comments to the TFA talk page, and you can ping all the TFA coordinators by adding " |
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From today's featured article
Ellis Wackett (13 August 1901 – 3 August 1984) was a senior commander in the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF). Its chief engineer from 1935 to 1959, he served on the RAAF's Air Board for a record seventeen years and was credited with infusing operations with new standards of airworthiness. Starting as a Royal Australian Navy cadet, he transferred to the Air Force in 1923. He inaugurated parachute instruction within the RAAF and made the country's first freefall descent from a military aircraft in 1926. Wackett rose to air commodore by 1942, assuming the role of Air Member for Engineering and Maintenance, then established the Technical Branch as a separate department of the RAAF in 1948. He was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire and Companion of the Order of the Bath. From 1960 to 1968, he was a member of the Australian National Airlines Commission, the parent of Trans Australia Airlines. (Full article...)
From tomorrow's featured article
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The European rabbit (Oryctolagus cuniculus) is a species of rabbit native to the Iberian Peninsula and southwestern France. It is the sole living member of the genus Oryctolagus and has two subspecies. The European rabbit eats plants and lives in grasslands, and is highly adaptable to different environments, making its distinctive burrows known as warrens to live underground. It is the only species of rabbit to be domesticated, and the many breeds of European rabbit vary widely in size and shape, though the typical European rabbit has brown, grey or black fur with white undersides and is smaller than a European hare or mountain hare. In the European rabbit's mating system, dominant males have multiple female mates, though monogamous relationships are common in groups with fewer females. European rabbits have been introduced to every continent except for Antarctica, but are facing population declines in their native range due to overhunting, habitat destruction, and disease. (Full article...)
From the day after tomorrow's featured article
Mesklin is a fictional planet created by Hal Clement and used in his hard science fiction stories, starting with Mission of Gravity (1954). Alongside the novel's original 1953 serialization in Astounding Science Fiction, Clement published an essay titled "Whirligig World" on how he designed the planet. The idea came from an object that was believed to exist in the 61 Cygni system, possibly an extrasolar planet. The planet is distinctive for the interaction of its strong gravity with the centrifugal force due to its fast rotation, giving it a gradient in the perceived force of gravity from 3 g on the equator to 665 g on the planet's poles (diagram pictured). It is inhabited by native lifeforms, including an intelligent centipede-like species, the Mesklinites. Mesklin is considered an example of hard science fiction worldbuilding, an exotic milieu that accords with known facts and laws of physics. While the planet is dissimilar to Earth, its inhabitants are commonly regarded as humanlike in behaviour. (Full article...)