Wikipedia:Main Page history/2016 January 31

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Guerrillas at Cabanatuan

The Raid at Cabanatuan was a rescue of Allied prisoners of war (POWs) and civilians from a Japanese camp near Cabanatuan City in the Philippines. On January 30, 1945, during World War II, United States Army Rangers, Alamo Scouts, and Filipino guerrillas (pictured) liberated more than 500 from the POW camp. Having survived the Battle of Bataan and the Bataan Death March, followed by years of torture, malnourishment, and disease, the prisoners feared they would all be executed when General Douglas MacArthur and his American forces returned to Luzon. A group of over a hundred Rangers and Scouts from the Sixth Army and several hundred Filipino guerrillas were sent to rescue the prisoners. They traveled 30 miles (48 km) behind Japanese lines to reach the camp. Under the cover of darkness and a distraction by a P-61 Black Widow, the group surprised the Japanese forces in and around the camp. Hundreds of Japanese troops were killed in the 30-minute coordinated attack; the Americans suffered minimal casualties. The raid was depicted in the book Ghost Soldiers and the films Back to Bataan and The Great Raid. (Full article...)

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Grizzled giant squirrel

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... that Playboy threatened to sue Betty Brosmer after she declined to pose nude at a photo shoot?
... that Christ's Hospital, the forerunner of today's Stormont–Vail HealthCare complex in Kansas, was deeded to the city of Topeka for one dollar?
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... that F.C. United of Manchester's Broadhurst Park stadium includes a recycled stand previously used at another football ground?

In the news

U.S. winter storm on January 23

Hilda Heine is elected President of the Marshall Islands.
AlphaGo becomes the first computer program to defeat a professional human Go player.
A cold wave across East Asia results in more than 100 deaths, primarily in Taiwan.
Amid an outbreak of the Zika virus, several countries in the Americas warn women to postpone pregnancy due to a suspected link to microcephaly in newborn babies.
A winter storm (satellite image pictured) causes more than 50 deaths and paralyzes travel across the Eastern United States.

Ongoing events:
- European migrant crisis
Recent deaths:

On this day...

January 31: Independence Day in Nauru (1968)

Comet Hyakutake

1578 – Eighty Years' War: Spain won a crushing victory in the Battle of Gembloux, hastening the disintegration of the unity of the rebel provinces and bringing an end to the Union of Brussels.
1801 – John Marshall became the fourth Chief Justice of the United States; his court opinions helped lay the basis for American constitutional law and made the Supreme Court a coequal branch of government.
1900 – Datu Muhammad Salleh, leader of a series of major disturbances in North Borneo, was shot dead in Tambunan, but his followers did not give up for five more years.
1942 – Second World War: Allied forces retreated from British Malaya to Singapore, ceding control of the country to Japan.
1996 – Japanese amateur astronomer Yuji Hyakutake discovered Comet Hyakutake (pictured), which was one of the closest cometary approaches of the previous 200 years.

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Today's featured picture

Aplysina archeri is a species of sponge that has long tube-like structures of cylindrical shape. Many tubes are attached to one particular part of the organism; a single tube can grow up to 5 feet (1.5 m) high and 3 inches (7.6 cm) thick. These sponges mostly live in the Atlantic Ocean. These filter feeders eat food such as plankton or suspended detritus as it passes them.

Photograph: Nick Hobgood

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