Also, William Huskisson was the first person in world history to be killed by a railway accident, but not the first person to be killed by a train. In 1815, sixteen people died after a train's boiler exploded.

Crush, Texas was a temporary "city" established as a one-day publicity stunt in 1896. That year, William G. Crush, general passenger agent of the Katy Railroad, conceived the idea to demonstrate a train wreck as a spectacle. No admission was charged, and train fares to the crash site were at the reduced rate of $5 from any location in Texas. As a result between 30,000 and 50,000 people showed up on September 15, 1896 making the new town of Crush, Texas the second largest city in the state.

Towel Day is celebrated every May 25 as a tribute by fans of the late author Douglas Adams. Update: fixed the link. Argh.

Cool wikipedia visualization

Gliese 581 c is a newly discovered extrasolar planet orbiting the red dwarf star Gliese 581. It appears to be the first extrasolar planet discovered in the hypothetical habitable zone surrounding its star, where surface temperatures might maintain liquid water and therefore be suitable for life as known on Earth.

Lolcat

The founder of Metafilter has some tips for building a healthy online community. Of relevance to Wikipedians:

When making moderation decisions, don't quote Terms of Service verbatim or legal code. Be honest and phrase things exactly like you would if you were talking to someone standing in front of you. "Hey man, we appreciate your enthusiasm, but what you're doing is uncool because..." is a lot better than "As per the user agreement, you must cease harrassment of other members per Section 10.9.a..."

Two plus two makes five

Disumbrationism was a hoax masquerading as an artistic school that was launched in 1924 by Paul Jordan-Smith, a novelist, Latin scholar, and authority on Robert Burton from Los Angeles, California.

(I'm taking a bit of a blogging hiatus -- working on some other projects, some wikipedia related, some not. Posts might be a bit less frequent for a week or two.)

Cool photo of chinese landscape -- looks almost like a vector illustration. Half of the links in the past few days are via reddit, by the way.

Wikitravel seems to be coming into its own. It just won a webby award and it's developing cool articles like Hitchhiking in Japan.

A fainting goat is a breed of domestic goat whose external muscles freeze for roughly 10 seconds when the goat is startled. Though painless, this generally results in the animal collapsing on its side.

The commons picture of the day is available via email and rss, too.

Awesome map depicting online communities by membership size and tenor. Serisouly, it's awesome. North is "practicals", South is "intellectuals", West is "focus on real life", East is "focus on the web".

Wikipedia's in the southeast. Good chance to brag about the disproportional readership our relatively small membership draws.

The City of a Thousand Pillars (Arabic: إرَم ذات العماد, Iramu ḏāt al-`imād) is a lost city on the Arabian Peninsula.

A gaikokujin tarento (外国人タレント) is a foreign celebrity active exclusively or almost exclusively in Japan.

"And why, you might ask, is it even important to understand such an obscure, silly phenomenon? Why is it important to understand gaming culture, furries, or TV fandom? Should we not dismiss such embarrassing cultural idiocy, and lead humanity towards a golden age of a new enlightenment? I believe in the latter, but not in the former. If we want to advance as a species, we must understand what makes us tick. We must develop models that help us to explain why people form online communities around the idea of hunting menacing citrus fruits." via geoff

Category:Famous man-eating animals is up for deletion! I vote keep.