Wikipedia:Main Page history/2020 March 26

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Ubinas is a stratovolcano in the Moquegua Region of southern Peru, 60 kilometres (37 mi) east of the city of Arequipa. Part of the Central Volcanic Zone of the Andes, it rises 5,672 metres (18,609 ft) above sea level. Its summit is cut by a caldera 1.4 kilometres (0.87 mi) wide and 150 metres (490 ft) deep, which itself contains a smaller crater. Below the summit, Ubinas is a steep cone with a prominent notch on the southern side. The most active volcano in Peru, it has a history of small- to moderate-sized explosive eruptions and persistent degassing and ash emissions. An eruption in 1667, its largest since prehistoric times, produced scoria falls and pyroclastic flows. In 2006 and 2007 eruption columns led to ash fall in the region, resulting in health issues and evacuations. During the most recent activity, from 2013 to 2019, a lava flow formed inside the crater, and as ash fell, surrounding towns had to be evacuated. (Full article...)

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Did you know ...

Caricature of Hector Berlioz by Étienne Carjat

... that besides his portrait photography, Étienne Carjat edited journals and published caricatures (example shown) in the popular press?
... that the systematic deportation of Jews to the Auschwitz concentration camp began on 26 March 1942, with a transport of 997 women and girls from Poprad, Slovakia?
... that Chiara Daraio has used a version of Newton's cradle to create "sound bullets", and walls filled with ball bearings to create one-way barriers for sound?
... that the Union Church in Hong Kong was temporarily moved to the officers' mess of the Hong Kong Volunteer Defence Corps from 1945 to 1949?
... that Senator Ted Kennedy's 1980 presidential campaign may have weakened support for incumbent U.S. president Jimmy Carter, who later lost the general election?
... that the Palazzo del Governatore di Borgo in Rome was one of the first buildings to display architect Antonio da Sangallo the Younger's artistic maturity?
... that during the American Civil War, Charles B. Norton offered to hide Peter Force's large library for fear of a Confederate attack on Washington, D.C.?
... that High Peak Borough Council dyed a lake black at Harpur Hill Quarry in Derbyshire, England, to deter swimmers from entering the caustic waters?

In the news

Coronavirus pandemic

Igor Matovič

Igor Matovič (pictured) becomes Prime Minister of Slovakia following elections in February.
Edwin Catmull and Pat Hanrahan receive the Turing Award for their work on computer-generated imagery.
Paleontologists announce the discovery of Asteriornis maastrichtensis, the oldest definitive species of modern bird, which lived at the end of the Mesozoic era.

On this day

March 26: Independence Day in Bangladesh (1971)

Jonas Salk administering the polio vaccine to a child

1697 – The Safavid Empire began a four-year occupation of the Ottoman city of Basra on the Persian Gulf.
1873 – A Dutch military expedition was launched to bombard Banda Aceh, the capital of the Aceh Sultanate in present-day Indonesia, beginning the Aceh War.
1953 – Jonas Salk announced the successful test of his polio vaccine on a small group of adults and children (vaccination pictured).
1979 – With the signing of a peace treaty in Washington, D.C., Egypt became the first Arab country officially to recognize Israel.
2010 – An explosion, allegedly caused by a North Korean torpedo, sank the South Korean warship ROKS Cheonan near Baengnyeongdo in the Yellow Sea, killing 46 sailors.

Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld (b. 1794) · Chonghou (d. 1893) · Eazy-E (d. 1995)

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Zaire ebolavirus, more commonly known as Ebola virus (EBOV), is one of six known species within the genus Ebolavirus. Four of the six known ebolaviruses, including EBOV, cause a severe and often fatal hemorrhagic fever in humans and other mammals, known as Ebola virus disease (EVD). Ebola virus has caused the majority of human deaths from EVD, and was the cause of the 2013–2016 epidemic in western Africa, which resulted in at least 28,646 suspected cases and 11,323 confirmed deaths. The EBOV genome is of negative-sense single-stranded RNA, approximately 19,000 nucleotides in length. Bats, predominantly fruit bats, are believed to be the natural reservoir of the virus, which is primarily transmitted between humans and from animals to humans through body fluids. Infection with the virus produces a high mortality rate among humans.

This picture is a colorized scanning electron micrograph of Ebola virus particles (green), visible both as extracellular particles and budding particles from a chronically infected African green monkey kidney cell (blue), at 20,000× magnification. This image was taken in a biosafety level 4 facility, the highest level of biosafety precautions, which is used for easily transmissible agents that cause severe to fatal disease in humans for which there are no available vaccines or treatments.

Photograph credit: John G. Bernbaum

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