Villa Park is an association football stadium in Aston, Birmingham,
England, with a seating capacity of 42,682. Formerly a sports ground in
a Victorian amusement park, it has been the home of Aston Villa Football
Club since 17 April 1897. The ground has hosted sixteen England
internationals at senior level, the first in 1899 and the most recent in
2005. It has hosted 55 FA Cup semi-finals, more than any other stadium.
The club has initial planning permission to redevelop its North Stand,
which will increase its capacity to around 50,000. Aside from football-
related uses, the stadium has seen concerts and other sporting events,
including boxing matches and international rugby league and rugby union
matches. In 1999, the last ever final of the UEFA Cup Winners' Cup took
place at Villa Park. It also hosted the 2012 FA Community Shield, as
Wembley Stadium was being used for the final of the Olympic football
tournament.
Read more: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Villa_Park>
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Today's selected anniversaries:
1362:
Lithuanian Crusade: After a month-long siege, the Teutonic
Order captured and destroyed Kaunas Castle (reconstruction pictured) in
Lithuania.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Kaunas_(1362)>
1907:
Brazil became the third country in the world to start
construction on a dreadnought battleship, sparking a vastly expensive
South American naval arms race.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_American_dreadnought_race>
1961:
Armed Cuban exiles backed by the CIA invaded Cuba, landing in
the Bay of Pigs, with the aim of overthrowing the Cuban government under
Fidel Castro.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bay_of_Pigs_Invasion>
1975:
The Khmer Rouge under Pol Pot captured Phnom Penh, ending the
Cambodian Civil War, and established Democratic Kampuchea.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambodian_Civil_War>
2014:
NASA announced the discovery of Kepler-186f, the first
exoplanet with a radius similar to Earth's discovered in the habitable
zone of another star.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kepler-186f>
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Wiktionary's word of the day:
hate-watch:
(informal) To watch a television programme, etc., that one dislikes, for
the pleasure one gets from criticizing or making fun of it.
<https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/hate-watch>
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Wikiquote quote of the day:
The population of the world is gradually dividing into two
classes, Anarchists and criminals.
--Benjamin Tucker
<https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Benjamin_Tucker>
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