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From today's featured article

Universal Newsreel of the Grapple 2 test on 31 May 1957

The British hydrogen bomb programme was the ultimately successful British effort to develop thermonuclear weapons. The successful test of an atomic bomb in Operation Hurricane in 1952 made Britain a nuclear power, but hopes that the United States would be sufficiently impressed to restore the Special Relationship were soon disappointed. In 1954, Cabinet agreed to proceed with the development of the hydrogen bomb. The scientists at the Atomic Weapons Establishment did not know how to build one, but produced three designs: Orange Herald, a large boosted fission weapon; Green Bamboo, an interim design; and Green Granite, a true thermonuclear design. The first series of Operation Grapple tests (newsreel featured) were hailed as a success, but Green Granite was a failure. In November 1957, they successfully tested a thermonuclear design. Subsequent tests demonstrated a mastery of the technology. Together with the Sputnik crisis, this resulted in the 1958 US–UK Mutual Defence Agreement, and the Special Relationship was restored. (Full article...)

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In the news

COVID-19 pandemic

Crew Dragon launch

SpaceX's Crew Dragon and Falcon 9 make their first crewed launch (pictured) for NASA.
Protests and riots break out in Minneapolis and elsewhere in the United States, following the death of George Floyd.
Costa Rica becomes the first Central American country to legalise same-sex marriage.
A Pakistan International Airlines passenger aircraft crashes in Karachi, killing ninety-seven people.

On this day

May 31: World No Tobacco Day

Mark Felt

1223 – Mongol invasion of Kievan Rus': Mongol forces defeated a combined Rus' army at the Kalka River in present-day Ukraine.
1775 – American Revolution: The Committee of Safety of Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, adopted the Mecklenburg Resolves, which annulled and vacated all laws originating from the authority of the King or Parliament.
1902 – The Second Boer War came to an end with the signing of the Treaty of Vereeniging in Pretoria, South Africa.
1935 – An earthquake registering 7.7 M_w struck Balochistan in the British Raj, now part of Pakistan, killing between 30,000 and 60,000 people.
2005 – An article in the magazine Vanity Fair revealed that the secret informant known as "Deep Throat", who had provided information about the Watergate scandal, was former FBI associate director Mark Felt (pictured).

Kusumoto Ine (b. 1827)
Clint Eastwood (b. 1930)
Mbaye Diagne (d. 1994)

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Today's featured picture

A hybrid-propellant rocket is a rocket with an engine that uses propellants in two different phases, one solid and the other gaseous or liquid. The concept can be traced back to at least the 1930s.

This picture shows a transparent 3D-printed hybrid-rocket fuel grain with dual helical fuel ports, a post-combustion chamber, and a de Laval nozzle, photographed prior to the hot-fire test. The motor used nitrous oxide as the oxidizer and Pyrodex pellets for the igniter.

Photograph credit: Matt Steiner and Kees08

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