Wikipedia:Main Page history/2016 April 6

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From today's featured article

The trestle, photographed in April 2011

The Rosendale Trestle is a 940-foot (290 m) continuous truss bridge and former railroad trestle in Rosendale in Ulster County, New York. Originally constructed by the Wallkill Valley Railroad to continue its rail line from New Paltz to Kingston, the bridge rises 150 feet (46 m) above Rondout Creek, spanning both Route 213 and the former Delaware and Hudson Canal. Construction began in 1870; when it opened to rail traffic on April 6, 1872, it was the highest span bridge in the United States. The trestle was rebuilt in 1895 by the King Bridge Company to address public concerns regarding its stability and sturdiness, and it was repeatedly reinforced until 1977, when Conrail closed the Wallkill Valley rail line. The bridge was sold in 1986 for one dollar to a private businessman who tried unsuccessfully to operate it as a bungee jumping platform, and a similar attempt was made the following decade. The trestle was seized by the county in 2009 for tax nonpayment, and renovated for the Wallkill Valley Rail Trail as a pedestrian walkway that opened on June 29, 2013. (Full article...)

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Courtenay Gate in Hove, pictured in 2007
Courtenay Gate in Hove, pictured in 2007

In the news

Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson in 2014
Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson

On this day...

April 6

Cover of the official report of the 1896 Olympics
Cover of the official report of the 1896 Olympics

Today's featured picture

James Watson

James Watson (b. 1928) is an American molecular biologist, geneticist and zoologist, best known for discovering the double helix structure of DNA in 1953 jointly with Francis Crick. Watson, Crick, and Maurice Wilkins were awarded the 1962 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine "for their discoveries concerning the molecular structure of nucleic acids and its significance for information transfer in living material". Educated at the University of Chicago and Indiana University, Watson met Crick at the University of Cambridge's Cavendish Laboratory in England, where they were still working when they deduced the structure. Watson wrote of the discovery in his book, The Double Helix (1968), and promoted further study of molecular biology while serving as director of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) on Long Island, New York.

Photograph: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory; edit: Jan Arkesteijn

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