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Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number is a 2015 top-down shooter game developed by Dennaton Games and published by Devolver Digital. A sequel to Hotline Miami, it focuses on the prelude and aftermath of that game's protagonist's actions against the Russian mafia in Miami. The player takes on the role of several characters throughout Hotline Miami 2, witnessing the game's events from their perspectives. In each level, the player is tasked with defeating every enemy through any means possible. The game was released on 10 March 2015 for Linux, OS X, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita, and Windows. It received positive reviews, with critics praising the soundtrack, but the gameplay, level design and narrative received mixed reactions. The game featured a scene depicting sexual assault, which triggered a mostly negative response from media outlets and led to it being refused classification in Australia. (Full article...)

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Did you know ...

John Hogan

... that tobacco brands like Marlboro, led by John Hogan (pictured), turned Formula One into a global sport because F1 cars evaded European tobacco advertising restrictions?
... that one incident in Vatican City caused it to have the highest murder rate in the world in 1998?
... that the earliest of the authentic portraits of Mozart shows the prodigy wearing the clothes of Archduke Maximilian Francis of Austria, given as a gift by Empress Maria Theresa?
... that a rookie WNBA player crafted a leg sleeve to avoid discomfort and did not expect it to become a fashion trend?
... that the oldest depiction of the Amida Triad in Japanese art was donated to the Imperial Household by Hōryū-ji in 1878?
... that Barack Obama listed an anti-war song as one of his favorite songs of 2022?
... that an "everliving" stonecrop has helped diabetic mice?
... that footage of the 1970 Minneapolis teachers' strike uncovered in 2022 showed an 11-year-old Prince speaking in favor of the striking teachers?
... that the tower of 32 pillars only has 24 pillars?

In the news

Ōfunato wildfire

Andrew Barto and Richard Sutton are awarded the Turing Award for their work on reinforcement learning.
A wildfire (pictured) in Japan's Iwate Prefecture becomes the largest in the country in at least five decades.
Chinese architect Liu Jiakun is awarded the Pritzker Architecture Prize.
The United States imposes—and later partially delays—tariffs on Canada and Mexico and increases tariffs on China, incurring retaliatory tariffs from Canada and China.
Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost soft-lands on the Moon as part of NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services program.

On this day

March 10: Harriet Tubman Day in some parts of the United States;

Eliot Spitzer

1695 – Nine Years' War: At the Battle of Sant Esteve d'en Bas, Catalan miquelets attacked a column of French regular infantry and caused them to surrender.
1959 – An anti-Chinese uprising began as thousands of Tibetans surrounded the Potala Palace in Lhasa to prevent the Dalai Lama from leaving or being removed by the Chinese army.
1968 – Vietnam War/Laotian Civil War: North Vietnamese and Pathet Lao forces overwhelmed the American, Laotian, Thai, and Hmong defenders of Lima Site 85.
1977 – Astronomers using NASA's Kuiper Airborne Observatory discovered a faint ring system around Uranus.
2008 – The New York Times revealed that Eliot Spitzer (pictured), Governor of New York, had patronized a prostitution ring.

Tvrtko I of Bosnia (d. 1391)
Lillian Wald (b. 1867)
Marie-Eugénie de Jésus (d. 1898)
Rupert Bruce-Mitford (d. 1994)

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Sfax, the first French protected cruiser

A series of 33 protected cruisers were built by the French Navy during the 1880s and 1890s. Protected cruisers were differentiated from other cruising warships by their relatively light sloped armor deck that provided a measure of protection against incoming shellfire, as opposed to armored cruisers that relied on heavy belt armor, or unprotected cruisers that lacked armor entirely. The first French protected cruiser, Sfax (pictured), was designed in the early 1880s in response to the introduction of similar vessels in the British Royal Navy; two more vessels of similar but larger designs – Tage and Amiral Cécille – followed shortly thereafter. Beginning in the mid-1890s, a series of large cruisers were ordered; the first of these, D'Entrecasteaux, carried the largest guns of any French cruiser. Most of the vessels had relatively uneventful careers, serving in a variety of locations with the main fleets, in the French colonies in Asia, and on patrol in the Atlantic. (Full list...)

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Verbena hastata, commonly known as the American vervain, blue vervain, simpler's joy, or swamp verbena, is a perennial flowering plant in the vervain family, Verbenaceae. It grows throughout the continental United States and in much of southern Canada. V. hastata grows as a stiffly erect stem, occasionally branching in the upper half, reaching up to 1.5 metres (5 feet) tall. The stems are four-angled (square), hairy, and green to reddish in color. Leaves are opposite, simple, and measure up to 15 centimetres (6 inches) long and 3 centimetres (1 inch) across. This photograph, which was focus-stacked from 50 separate images, shows a V. hastata inflorescence.

Photograph credit: Dominicus Johannes Bergsma

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