Sunday, April 12, 2020

Wikipedia article of the day for April 13, 2020

The Wikipedia article of the day for April 13, 2020 is Andha Naal.
Andha Naal (That Day) is a 1954 Indian Tamil-language mystery-thriller film, produced by A. V. Meiyappan and directed by S. Balachander (pictured). It is the first film noir in Tamil cinema, and the first Tamil film made without songs, dancing, or stunt sequences. It is set in Madras during World War II; after a radio engineer Rajan (Sivaji Ganesan) is killed, each suspect's account points to a new suspect. The film developed from a play script that Balachander wrote, adapting the narrative style of Akira Kurosawa's Rashomon. The screenplay was written by Javar Seetharaman, and cinematography was handled by S. Maruti Rao. Released on 13 April 1954, the eve of Tamil New Year, the film was initially a commercial failure, but it was re-released after winning a Certificate of Merit in 1955 at the National Film Awards and became a box-office success. In 2013, Andha Naal was included in CNN-News18's list of the "100 Greatest Indian Films of All Time".

Saturday, April 11, 2020

Wikipedia article of the day for April 12, 2020

The Wikipedia article of the day for April 12, 2020 is Segnosaurus.
Segnosaurus is a genus of large-bodied therizinosaurid dinosaurs that lived during the Late Cretaceous. Discovered in the Gobi Desert in southeastern Mongolia in the 1970s, incomplete but well-preserved specimens included the lower jaw, neck and tail vertebrae, the pelvis, the shoulder girdle, and limb bones. Parts of the specimens have since gone missing or become damaged. Named in 1979, Segnosaurus ('slow lizard') is estimated to have been about 6–7 m (20–23 ft) long and to have weighed about 1.3 metric tons (1.4 short tons). It was bipedal, with the trunk of its body tilted upwards. The head was small with a beak at the tip of the jaws, and the neck was long and slender, adapted to browsing. The forelimbs were robust, with three-fingered hands bearing large claws, and the feet had four toes. The pubic bone was turned backwards, as in birds. Segnosaurus and its relatives are thought to have been mainly herbivorous, unlike most other theropods, and slow-moving.

Friday, April 10, 2020

Wikipedia article of the day for April 11, 2020

The Wikipedia article of the day for April 11, 2020 is Apollo 13.
Apollo 13 (April 11–17, 1970) was the seventh crewed mission in the Apollo space program and the third meant to land on the Moon. The landing was aborted after an oxygen tank in the service module (pictured) failed two days into the mission. Apollo 13 was commanded by Jim Lovell with Jack Swigert as command module (CM) pilot and Fred Haise as lunar module (LM) pilot. Swigert was a late replacement for Ken Mattingly, who was grounded after exposure to rubella. After the explosion, the CM's systems had to be shut down to conserve resources, forcing the crew to transfer to the LM as a lifeboat. Although the LM was designed to support two men for two days, Mission Control improvised new procedures so it could support three men for four days. The astronauts' peril briefly renewed interest in the Apollo program; tens of millions watched the splashdown in the South Pacific Ocean by television. The story of Apollo 13 has been dramatized, most notably in the 1995 film Apollo 13.

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