Final Fantasy VIII is a role-playing video game released for the PlayStation in 1999 and Windows in 2000. It was developed and published by Square as the Final Fantasy series' eighth title, the first title to consistently use realistically proportioned characters. The game follows a group who have joined the "SeeD" mercenaries and are trying to stop Ultimecia, a sorceress from the future, from casting a spell that compresses time. Playable characters include the duty-bound loner Squall, the outspoken and passionate young woman Rinoa, the patient instructor Quistis, the martial artist Zell, the cheerful airship pilot Selphie, and Irvine, a marksman looking for love. The music was scored by Nobuo Uematsu, a series regular, and in a first for the series, the theme music is a vocal piece, "Eyes on Me", performed by Faye Wong. The game was a commercial success and positively received by critics. Thirteen weeks after its release, it had earned more than US$50 million in sales, making it the fastest-selling Final Fantasy title before Final Fantasy XIII, a multi-platform release. The game had shipped 8.15 million copies worldwide by the second quarter of 2003.

Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_Fantasy_VIII

_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:

1826:

Swaminarayan wrote the Shikshapatri, a book of 212 verses that serves as the basis of Swaminarayan Hinduism. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swaminarayan

1858:

Fourteen-year-old peasant girl Bernadette Soubirous reported the first of eighteen Marian apparitions in Lourdes, France, resulting in the town becoming a major site for pilgrimages by Catholics. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lourdes_apparitions

1919:

Friedrich Ebert was elected the first President of the German Weimar Republic by the Weimar National Assembly. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Ebert

1990:

Anti-apartheid activist Nelson Mandela, a political prisoner for 27 years, was released from Victor Verster Prison near Paarl, South Africa. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nelson_Mandela

2008:

Rebel East Timorese soldiers invaded the homes of President José Ramos-Horta and Prime Minister Xanana Gusmão, seriously wounding the former. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_East_Timorese_assassination_attempts

_____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day:

table: 1. (UK, Canada) To propose for discussion; to put on the table: the legislature tabled the amendment and will start discussing it now. 2. (US) To hold back to a later time; to postpone; to take off the table: the motion was tabled and parties agreed not to raise it again until next year. 3. To tabulate; to put into a table. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/table

___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day:

Misfortune is never mournful to the soul that accepts it; for such do always see that every cloud is an angel’s face. Every man deems that he has precisely the trials and temptations which are the hardest of all others for him to bear; but they are so, simply because they are the very ones he most needs.   --Lydia Maria Child https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Lydia_Maria_Child