Today's featured article
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 The Superb Fairywren is a common and familiar passerine bird of the Maluridae family. Sedentary and territorial, it is found across south-eastern Australia. The species exhibits a high degree of sexual dimorphism; the male in breeding plumage has a striking bright blue forehead, ear coverts, mantle, and tail, with a black mask and black or dark blue throat. Non-breeding males, females and juveniles are predominantly grey-brown in colour; this gave the early impression that males were polygamous as all dull-coloured birds were taken for females. Two subspecies are recognised: the larger and darker Tasmanian form cyaneus and the smaller and paler mainland form cyanochlamys. Like other fairywrens, the Superb Fairywren is notable for several peculiar behavioural characteristics; the birds are socially monogamous and sexually promiscuous, meaning that although they form pairs between one male and one female, each partner will mate with other individuals and even assist in raising the young from such pairings. Male wrens pluck yellow petals and display them to females as part of a courtship display. (more...)
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Did you know...
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On this day...
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March 10
- 241 BC – The Roman Republic defeated Carthage in a naval battle off the coast of the Aegadian Islands near the western coast of the island of Sicily, ending the First Punic War.
- 1831 – King Louis-Philippe of France created the French Foreign Legion (emblem pictured) as a unit of foreign volunteers because foreigners were forbidden to serve in the French Army after the 1830 July Revolution.
- 1876 – Alexander Graham Bell made his first successful bi-directional telephone call, saying, "Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you."
- 1906 – More than a thousand coal miners were killed in the Courrières mine disaster in Northern France, Europe's worst mining accident.
- 1959 – An anti-Chinese uprising erupted in Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, as about 300,000 Tibetans surrounded the Potala Palace to prevent the 14th Dalai Lama from leaving or being removed by the Chinese People's Liberation Army.
- 1977 – Astronomers using NASA's Kuiper Airborne Observatory, an observatory aboard a highly modified jet aircraft, discovered a faint planetary ring system around Uranus.
More anniversaries: March 9 – March 10 – March 11
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