the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit
5,168,206 articles in English![]() ![]() ![]() |
Omaha Beach was one of five sectors of the Allied invasion of German-occupied France in the Normandy landings on D-Day, 6 June 1944, during World War II. The untested 29th Infantry Division and nine companies of U.S. Army Rangers assaulted the western half of the beach; the battle-hardened 1st Infantry Division targeted the eastern half. The opposing German 352nd Infantry Division troops, mostly teenagers with no battalion-level training and some Eastern Front veterans, were largely deployed in strongpoints along the coast. The initial assault waves of tanks, infantry, and combat engineer forces were tasked with reducing the coastal defenses to allow larger ships to land. Little went as planned: most landing craft missed their targets, and the defenses were unexpectedly strong. Troops could not clear the heavily defended exits off the beach, delaying later landings. Groups of survivors eventually improvised assaults, scaling the bluffs between the most heavily defended points. By the end of the day, two small isolated footholds had been won, and the original objective of a beachhead 5 miles deep was achieved within days. (Full article...)
The Hammer projection is a map projection described by Ernst Hammer in 1892. It uses the same 2:1 elliptical outer shape as the Mollweide projection. Both projections are equal-area, but by depicting parallels of latitude as curved lines rather than straight, Hammer reduced distortion toward the outer limbs, where it is extreme in the Mollweide. Map: Strebe, using Geocart Recently featured: Male Panorpa alpina scorpionfly – Malaysian plover – Hagia Sophia
|
June 6: Ramadan begins (Islam, 2016); Queen's Official Birthday in New Zealand (2016); Western Australia Day (2016)
|
About Wikipedia
- Help — A general help directory about anything and everything Wikipedia
- Navigation — An explanation of wikilinks and other methods of navigating the site
- Search — A help page about how to effectively search for articles
- Editing — An explanation of how to edit articles
- Current projects — On-going projects on which editors are currently focusing
- Reference desk — Ask volunteers encyclopaedic questions about many different subjects
- Mobile access — An explanation of how to access Wikipedia from a mobile device
- Contact us — Information about how to contact Wikipedia
Wikimedia Foundation
Wikipedia is made possible by the Wikimedia Foundation, a non-profit organization that hosts a range of projects coordinated by volunteers at Meta-Wiki. The largest projects are shown below:
![]() |
Wikipedia Encyclopedia |
![]() |
Wiktionary Dictionary & thesaurus |
![]() |
Wikibooks Textbooks & manuals |
![]() |
Wikiquote Quotations |
![]() |
Commons Free media |
![]() |
Wikinews News |
![]() |
Wikiversity Learning tools |
![]() |
Wikisource Source texts |
![]() |
Wikispecies Species directory |
Each project is available in multiple languages. This is the English Wikipedia, which is one of more than 250 Wikipedias currently available. Interlanguage links, appearing in the left column by default, are used to connect a page on the English Wikipedia to other Wikipedias' pages on the same subject. If an article exists in another Wikipedia but not here in English, you can visit the Translation Department for information about requesting translations or translating articles yourself.