Roman withdrawal from Africa (255 BC)

The Wikipedia article of the day for September 16, 2021 is Roman withdrawal from Africa (255 BC). The Roman withdrawal from Africa in 255 BC was the attempt by the Roman Republic to rescue the survivors of their defeated expeditionary force to Carthaginian Africa (in what is now north-eastern Tunisia) during the First Punic War. A force of 390 warships fought and defeated 200 Carthaginian vessels off Cape Hermaeum (the modern Cape Bon or Ras ed-Dar), north of the town of Aspis. The Carthaginians had 114 of their ships captured, together with their crews, and 16 sunk. Most modern historians assume there were no Roman losses. The Romans landed in Aspis – where the Roman survivors of the previous year’s invasion were…

Raymond Pace Alexander

The Wikipedia article of the day for September 15, 2021 is Raymond Pace Alexander. Raymond Pace Alexander (1897–1974) was a civil rights leader, lawyer, and politician who was the first African-American judge appointed to the Pennsylvania courts of common pleas. In 1920, he became the first black graduate of the Wharton School of Business. He married in 1923; in 1927 his wife, Sadie, became the first black woman to earn a law degree from the University of Pennsylvania. After graduating from Harvard Law School in 1923, Alexander became one of the leading civil rights attorneys in Philadelphia. He represented black defendants in high-profile cases, including the Trenton Six, a group of black men arrested for murder in Trenton, New Jersey.…

Keechaka Vadham

The Wikipedia article of the day for September 14, 2021 is Keechaka Vadham. Keechaka Vadham (The Extermination of Keechaka) is an Indian silent film produced, directed, filmed and edited by R. Nataraja Mudaliar (pictured), and released in the late 1910s. No print of it is known to survive. The first Tamil film and the first film to be made in South India, it was shot in about five weeks at Mudaliar’s production house, India Film Company. The screenplay by C. Rangavadivelu is based on an episode from the Virata Parva segment of the Hindu epic Mahabharata, focusing on Keechaka’s attempts to woo Draupadi. The film stars Raju Mudaliar and Jeevarathnam as the central characters. Keechaka Vadham was commercially successful and received positive…

Sonic X-treme

The Wikipedia article of the day for September 13, 2021 is Sonic X-treme. Sonic X-treme was a platform game developed by Sega Technical Institute from 1994 until its cancellation in 1996. It was intended to be the first fully 3D Sonic the Hedgehog game and the first original Sonic game for the Sega Saturn (pictured). The game was conceived as a side-scrolling platform game for the Sega Genesis to succeed 1994’s Sonic & Knuckles. Development shifted to the 32X and then the Saturn and Microsoft Windows, and the game was redesigned as a 3D platform game for the 1996 holiday season. The plan was disrupted by illness, company politics, and an unfavorable visit by Sega executives. In place of X-treme,…