Wikipedia:Main Page history/2016 August 3

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From today's featured article

The Thorpe affair of the 1970s was a British political and sex scandal that ended the career of Jeremy Thorpe, the leader of the Liberal Party and Member of Parliament for North Devon. The scandal arose from allegations by Norman Scott of a homosexual affair, at a time when such relationships were illegal in the United Kingdom. Thorpe denied any such liaison and largely managed to avoid public and press scrutiny, but Scott's allegations were a persistent threat for years, endangering the Liberal Party's mid-1970s revival. Unsuccessful attempts to buy Scott's silence and frighten him culminated in 1975 with the shooting of his dog by a hired gunman. The police investigation and publicity forced Thorpe's resignation. He and three others were charged with conspiracy to murder Scott, but the main prosecution witnesses were undermined by, among other factors, their financial arrangements with newspapers. All four defendents were acquitted, although there were later claims that important prosecution evidence had been suppressed by the police. Thorpe's reputation was damaged irreparably by evidence that was uncontested, and he did not return to public life. (Full article...)

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In the news

Solar Impulse 2

In golf, Jimmy Walker wins the PGA Championship.
American skydiver Luke Aikins performs a 25,000-foot (7,600 m) free fall from an aircraft and lands on a ground net.
A hot air balloon catches fire and crashes near Lockhart, Texas, United States, killing 16 people.
Solar Impulse 2 (pictured) becomes the first solar-powered aircraft to circumnavigate the Earth, completing a 16-month voyage.

On this day...

August 3: Independence Day in Niger (1960); Flag Day in Venezuela

Jesse Owens

1811 – A climbing team led by the Meyer brothers from Aarau became the first to reach the summit of the Jungfrau, one of the main summits of the Bernese Alps.
1913 – A strike by agricultural workers in Wheatland, California, US, degenerated into a riot, one of the first major farm labor confrontations in California.
1936 – African American athlete Jesse Owens (pictured) won the first of his four gold medals at the Berlin Summer Olympics, dashing Nazi leaders' hopes of Aryan domination.
1960 – Niger officially gained independence from France as part of the decolonization of the French Community.
2007 – Former Deputy Director of the Chilean secret police Raúl Iturriaga was captured after having been on the run following a conviction for kidnapping.

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Today's featured picture

The 2014 edition of the Hubble Ultra-Deep Field, a composite image of separate exposures taken from 2003 to 2012 with the Hubble Space Telescope, and showing the full range of ultraviolet to near-infrared light. Made from 841 orbits of telescope viewing time, the image contains approximately 10,000 galaxies, extending back in time to within a few hundred million years of the Big Bang.

Photograph: NASA, ESA, IPAC/Caltech, STScI, ASU

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