Today's featured article

ToeJam & Earl is an action video game developed by Johnson Voorsanger Productions and published by Sega for the Mega Drive video game console. Released in 1991, it centers on the titular ToeJam and Earl—alien rappers who have crash-landed on Earth. As they attempt to escape the planet players assume the role of either character and collect pieces of their wrecked spacecraft. ToeJam & Earl's design was heavily influenced by the computer role-playing game Rogue, and took from it such features as the random generation of levels and items. It references and parodies 1990s urban culture and is set to a funk soundtrack. The game was positively received by critics, who praised its originality, soundtrack, humor and two-player cooperative mode. It attained sleeper hit status despite low initial sales, and its protagonists were used as mascots by Sega. ToeJam & Earl was followed by two sequels: ToeJam & Earl in Panic on Funkotron and ToeJam & Earl III: Mission to Earth, released for the Mega Drive and Xbox, respectively. The sequels' commercial and critical success was mixed; research has suggested that series fans favor the original ToeJam & Earl. The game again received positive reviews in 2006 when re-released for the Wii's Virtual Console, but certain critics believed that it had become dated. (more...)

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Selected anniversaries

January 8

• 1790 – George Washington delivered the first ever State of the Union address in New York City, then the provisional capital of the United States.
• 1815 – American forces led by General Andrew Jackson defeated the British Army at the Battle of New Orleans (pictured) near New Orleans, two weeks after the United States and United Kingdom signed the Treaty of Ghent to end the War of 1812.
• 1956 – Five Evangelical Christian missionaries from the United States were killed by the Huaorani in the rainforest of Ecuador shortly after making contact with them.
• 1979 – The oil tanker Betelgeuse exploded at the offshore jetty of the Whiddy Island Oil Terminal off Bantry Bay, Ireland, killing approximately 50 people.
• 2004 – RMS Queen Mary 2, at the time the longest, widest and tallest passenger ship ever built, was christened by her namesake's granddaughter, Queen Elizabeth II.

More anniversaries: January 7 – January 8 – January 9

In the news

• A church in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, is torched following a legal dispute involving a Catholic newsweekly which used the word Allah for the Christian God.
• Tsutomu Yamaguchi, the only person officially recognized to have survived both the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings (Nagasaki bombing pictured), dies of stomach cancer aged 93.
• The Ulster Defence Association, a loyalist paramilitary group in Northern Ireland, is confirmed by the Independent International Commission on Decommissioning to have decommissioned all of its weapons.
• Turkmenistan gains a new route to export its natural gas production to Iran with the opening of the Dauletabad–Sarakhs–Khangiran pipeline.
• A new wave of very cold weather, with temperatures dropping to as low as −40 °C (−40 °F), affects much of Europe.
• Burj Khalifa, the tallest structure ever built, opens to the public in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
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• ... that Royal Marine Francis Harvey, the mortally wounded commander of HMS Lion's 'Q' turret, was awarded the Victoria Cross for ordering the magazine flooded, which saved the ship during the Battle of Jutland?
• ... that the Goose Creek Oil Field in Galveston Bay had the first offshore oil wells in Texas, U.S., and the removal of oil led to subsidence of the overlying terrain?
• ... that in June 2005, Intel threatened photo printing company FotoInsight with legal action over their use of the name "The 'INSIDE' format" saying it infringed their trademark "Intel Inside"?
  
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