Wikipedia:Main Page history/2018 February 11

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From today's featured article

NTCA Ground, formerly Launceston Racecourse

A cricket match on 11 and 12 February 1851, played by teams from Van Diemen's Land (now Tasmania) and Port Phillip District (now Victoria), was the first between two Australian colonies, recognised in later years as the initial first-class cricket match in Australia. It took place at the Launceston Racecourse (pictured in 2009). The match was one of the celebratory events marking the separation of the Port Phillip District from New South Wales in 1851 as the colony of Victoria. The team representing Port Phillip was drawn from the Melbourne Cricket Club; the Van Diemen's Land team consisted of players from Launceston and Hobart. The visiting Port Phillip team was expected to have an advantage but had difficulties with the batting conditions and the opposition's unusually slow bowling. Batting first, Port Phillip scored 82; Van Diemen's Land replied with 104, assisted by a large number of extras. Batting again, the Victorian team scored 57; the Tasmanian team needed 36 to win, which they accomplished on the second day to record a three-wicket victory. Following this match, intercolonial cricket became increasingly widespread. (Full article...)

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On this day...

February 11: Victory of the Revolution in Iran (1979)

University College London Main Building

AD 55 – Britannicus, son of Claudius and heir to the Roman emperorship, died under mysterious circumstances in Rome, apparently poisoned at a dinner party.
1826 – University College London (Main Building pictured) was founded as the first secular university in England.
1938 – The BBC aired an adaptation of Karel Čapek's play R.U.R., the first science fiction television programme ever broadcast.
1968 – After two black employees were killed on the job, black sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee, U.S., agreed to begin a strike that lasted over two months.
2008 – Rebel East Timorese soldiers invaded the homes of President José Ramos-Horta and Prime Minister Xanana Gusmão, seriously wounding the former.

Heraclius (d. 641) · Ellen Broe (b. 1900) · Kelly Rowland (b. 1981)

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Kitty Joyner (1916–1993) was an American electrical engineer with the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), and then the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). She was hired in 1939 as the organization's first woman engineer, shortly after she had become the first woman to graduate from the University of Virginia's engineering program.

Photograph: NACA

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