Wikipedia:2008 main page redesign proposal/Pretzels

• Severe flooding in Yemen caused by Deep Depression ARB 02 (pictured) kills 58 and displaces 20,000.
• A bomb attack in Zagreb, Croatia kills Ivo Pukanić, the owner of the newspaper Nacional.
• The Indian Space Research Organisation successfully launches Chandrayaan-1, an unmanned lunar exploration mission.
• Several additional amino acids are found in vials from the 1953 Miller–Urey experiment that probed the origin of life.
• The United Nations General Assembly elects Turkey, Austria, Japan, Uganda, and Mexico to two-year terms on the Security Council.

• ... that AMiBA (pictured) is a radio telescope located on Mauna Loa in Hawaii that is being used to observe the Cosmic Microwave Background and the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect in clusters of galaxies?
• ...that although the official government death toll of the 1997 Ardabil earthquake was given as 965 deaths, rescue workers at the scene claimed it was as much as three times higher?
• ... that Tang Dynasty general Li Na was, at one point, reduced to tears when he was under siege by another general, Liu Qia?
• ... that four of the candidates for either Governor or Lt. Governor in the 2008 American Samoa gubernatorial elections have ancestral ties to the Manu'a Islands?

• 1597 – Imjin War: About twelve Korean ships commanded by Admiral Yi Sun-sin defeated a large Japanese invasion fleet of at least 300 at the Battle of Myeongnyang in the Myeongnyang Strait. against waves of Japanese attackers during the Battle of Shanghai.
• 2001 – U.S. President George W. Bush signed the USA PATRIOT Act into law, significantly expanding the authority of U.S. law enforcement agencies in fighting terrorism in the United States and abroad.
• 2002 – Approximately 40 Chechen rebels and 130 hostages died when Russian forces stormed a theater building in Moscow to end a four-day hostage siege.

The sword-billed hummingbird (Ensifera ensifera) is a neotropical species of hummingbird from the Andean regions of South America. Among the largest species of hummingbird, it is characterized by its unusually long beak, being the only bird to have a beak longer than the rest of its body, excluding the tail. It uses this to drink nectar from flowers with long corollas and has coevolved with the plant Passiflora mixta. While most hummingbirds preen using their beaks, the sword-billed hummingbird uses its feet to scratch and preen due to its beak being so long.