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Today's featured article

Pearl Jam is an American rock band that formed in Seattle, Washington in 1990. Since its inception, the band's line-up has consisted of Eddie Vedder (lead vocals, guitar), Jeff Ament (bass guitar), Stone Gossard (rhythm guitar), and Mike McCready (lead guitar). The band's current drummer is Matt Cameron, formerly of Soundgarden, who has been with the band since 1998. Formed after the demise of Ament and Gossard's previous band Mother Love Bone, Pearl Jam broke into the mainstream with its debut album Ten. One of the key bands of the grunge movement in the early 1990s, Pearl Jam was nevertheless criticized early on as being a corporate cash-in on the alternative rock explosion. However, its members became noted for their refusal to adhere to traditional music industry practices as their career progressed, including refusing to make music videos and engaging in a much-publicized boycott of Ticketmaster. Rolling Stone described the band as having "spent much of the past decade deliberately tearing apart their own fame." Since its inception, the band has sold 30 million records in the U.S., and an estimated 60 million albums worldwide. Pearl Jam has outlasted many of its contemporaries from the alternative rock breakthrough of the early 1990s, and is considered one of the most influential bands of the decade, and "the most popular American rock band of the 1990s". (more...)

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Did you know...

From Wikipedia's newest articles:

...that Jamshedji Framji Madan (pictured) was a pioneer of Indian cinema, whose film production company Madan Theatres Limited once controlled half of British India's box office?
...that cyber law author and professor Jonathan Zittrain co-founded StopBadware.org to distribute the task of collecting data about malware to Internet users at large?
...that the Main Building of Peace College was first used as a Confederate military hospital and regional headquarters for the Freedmen's Bureau?
...that John Madden has most wins of any Oakland Raiders head coach?
...that despite winning the 1989 World Indoor Championships, West German 400 metres sprinter Helga Arendt failed to reach the final round at the European Championships one year later?
...that Stewart White has presented the regional BBC News programme Look East for 24 years?
...that Tori Amos got the melody for her song "1000 Oceans" from a "dark angel" singing to her in a dream?
...that at the height of its popularity, New York's Easter Parade drew crowds of over a million?
...that John Dick, the high scorer in the first-ever NCAA men's basketball championship, would later command the U.S. Navy supercarrier USS Saratoga?

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In the news

Fernando Lugo (pictured) wins the presidential election in Paraguay, ending the Colorado Party's 61-year rule.
In auto racing, Danica Patrick wins the Indy Japan 300, becoming the first female driver to win an IndyCar race.
An airliner operated by Hewa Bora Airways crashes upon takeoff in Goma, Democratic Republic of the Congo, killing at least 47 people.
An alliance led by Silvio Berlusconi of the People of Freedom party wins the general election in Italy.
Trevor Immelman of South Africa wins the 2008 Masters Tournament at the Augusta National Golf Club.
Jacques-Édouard Alexis is ousted as Prime Minister of Haiti following riots over the price of food.
The Channel Island Sark abolishes the last remaining feudal system in Europe.

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On this day...

April 22: Earth Day.

1500 – Portuguese explorer Pedro Álvares Cabral (pictured) and his crew became the first Europeans to sight Brazil when they spotted Monte Pascoal.
1889 – Over 50,000 people rushed to claim a piece of the available two million acres (8,000 km²) in the Unassigned Lands, the present-day U.S. state of Oklahoma. Within hours, both Oklahoma City and Guthrie had established cities of around 10,000 people.
1915 – The Germans released chlorine gas as a chemical weapon in the Second Battle of Ypres, killing over 5,000 soldiers within ten minutes by asphyxiation in the first large-scale successful use of poison gas in World War I.
1930 – France, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States signed the London Naval Treaty, regulating submarine warfare and limiting military ship building.
1945 – About 600 prisoners of the Jasenovac concentration camp in the Independent State of Croatia revolted, but only 80 managed to escape while the other 520 were killed by the Croatian Ustaše regime.
1993 – The first version of Mosaic, created by computer programmers Marc Andreessen and Eric Bina at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, was released, becoming the first popular World Wide Web browser and Gopher client.

More events: April 21 – April 22 – April 23

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Today's featured picture

The Chipping Sparrow (Spizella passerina) is a species of American sparrow in the family Emberizidae. It is widespead, fairly tame, and generally common across much of its North American range.

Photo credit: Mdf

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This Wikipedia is written in English. Started in 2001, it currently contains 2,343,295 articles. Many other Wikipedias are available; the largest are listed below.