Wikipedia:Main Page history/2022 August 30b
From today's featured article
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Judith Resnik (1949–1986) was an American electrical, software and biomedical engineer, pilot and astronaut who died in the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster in January 1986. Resnik was the fourth woman and second American woman to fly in space, logging 145 hours in orbit. With a PhD in electrical engineering, she worked for RCA as an engineer on Navy missile and radar projects, and for Xerox as a senior systems engineer. She published research on special-purpose integrated circuitry. At age 28, she was selected by NASA as a mission specialist in the first NASA astronaut group to include women. While training she developed software and operating procedures for NASA missions. Her first space flight was the STS-41-D mission, the maiden voyage of Space Shuttle Discovery which launched on August 30, 1984, during which her duties included operating the orbiter's robotic arm. Her second shuttle mission was STS-51-L aboard Challenger. She died when it broke up shortly after liftoff. (Full article...)
Did you know ...
- ... that when Winifred Brown (pictured) arrived for the King's Cup air race in 1930, she was not allowed to stay at the aero club but still won the race?
- ... that voting in the first Eurovision Song Contest was conducted in secret, with countries able to vote for their own entries, and only the winner of the contest being announced?
- ... that William White's last NFL game was Super Bowl XXXIII, in which he made a team-high nine tackles for the losing Atlanta Falcons?
- ... that Leafpad is a text editor for Linux that is comparable to Notepad for Windows?
- ... that cosmetic chemist Balanda Atis created the foundation worn by Lupita Nyong'o in advertisements for Lancôme?
- ... that a practice known as jieba, in which a Buddhist monk has scars ritually burned into his head, was banned by the Chinese government for 300 years?
- ... that Clifford G. Grulee died while attending a dinner hosted by the American Academy of Pediatrics in his honor?
- ... that the name of the International Institute of Modern Letters has been criticised by its founder Bill Manhire for being "almost at odds with the fine use of language"?
In the news
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- Former president of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev (pictured) dies at the age of 91.
- Floods in Pakistan kill more than 1,100 people and over 700,000 livestock.
- William Ruto is elected President of Kenya.
- In Giza, Egypt, a church fire spreads to a nursery and kills 41 people, including at least 18 children.
On this day
August 30: Victory Day in Turkey (1922)
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- 1942 – Second World War: German field marshal Erwin Rommel launched the last major Axis offensive of the Western Desert campaign, attacking British positions near El Alamein, Egypt.
- 1959 – Writer and politician Abdul Muis became the first person to be awarded the posthumous title of National Hero of Indonesia.
- 1959 – South Vietnamese opposition figure Phan Quang Đán was elected to the National Assembly, despite soldiers being bussed in to vote multiple times for President Ngô Đình Diệm's candidate.
- 1984 – Discovery, the third orbiter of NASA's Space Shuttle program, lifted off on its maiden voyage from Kennedy Space Center, Florida.
- 1992 – German racing driver Michael Schumacher (pictured) won the Belgian Grand Prix, the first of his 91 Formula One Grand Prix wins.
- Mary Shelley (b. 1797)
- Marcelo H. del Pilar (b. 1850)
- Guy Burgess (d. 1963)
Today's featured picture
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Ignace-Gaston Pardies (1636–1673) was a French Catholic priest and scientist. His celestial atlas, entitled Globi coelestis in tabulas planas redacti descriptio, comprised six charts of the night sky and was first published in 1674. The atlas uses a gnomonic projection so that the plates make up a cube of the celestial sphere. The constellation figures are drawn from Uranometria, but were carefully reworked and adapted to a broader view of the sky. This is the fifth plate from a 1693 edition of Pardies's atlas, featuring constellations including Lyra, Cygnus, Hercules, Ophiuchus, Sagittarius and Scorpius, Aquila, Delphinus, and Corona Australis, as well as Antinous, an obsolete constellation. All of these are visible in the Northern Hemisphere, though a few cross the boundary from the northern sky into the southern sky. Map credit: Ignace-Gaston Pardies
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