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From today's featured article

Stanley Goble (21 August 1891 – 24 July 1948) was a senior commander in the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) who served three terms as Chief of the Air Staff. During World War I, Goble flew fighters on the Western Front with the British Royal Naval Air Service. He became an ace with ten victories, commanded No. 5 Squadron, and was awarded the Distinguished Service Order and the Distinguished Service Cross. In 1924, he and fellow RAAF pilot Ivor McIntyre became the first men to circumnavigate Australia by air, journeying 13,600 km (8,450 mi) in a single-engined floatplane. On an exchange posting to Britain in the 1930s, Goble led No. 2 (Bomber) Group RAF. As Chief of the Air Staff at the onset of World War II, he clashed with the Australian Government over the implementation of the Empire Air Training Scheme. He stepped down as leader of the RAAF, and spent the rest of the war in Ottawa as air liaison officer to Canada. Goble died in 1948, two years after retiring from the military. (Full article...)

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Did you know ...

Hydrus

... that several bodies from the wrecked freighter Hydrus (pictured) were never recovered due to superstitions about touching the dead among the Saugeen people?
... that Seth Evans was the only skilled musician in the band HMLTD, by their own admission?
... that Poetri Hindia received a gift from a former Dutch queen for advancing the education of indigenous Indonesian women?
... that General Belisarius was about 25 years old when he defeated a Persian army roughly twice the size of his own at the Battle of Dara?
... that after Lady Caroline Lennox eloped with a commoner, her parents did not speak to her for four years?
... that the anarchist publisher PM Press was so named because its founders worked on it after hours as a second job?
... that St. Pat's for All, founded after LGBTQ groups were barred from the New York City St. Patrick's Day Parade, takes its motto from the 1916 proclamation of the Easter Rising?
... that a former international footballer is the chief fire officer of Gibraltar?
... that the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development headquarters was once mocked by a U.S. housing secretary as "10 floors of basement"?

In the news

Earthquake damage in East Manggarai, Indonesia

A magnitude-7.7 earthquake (damage pictured) strikes off the coast of Flores, Indonesia, causing at least 75 deaths.
Former premier of China Zhu Rongji dies at the age of 97.
A solar eclipse causes totality from Siberia to Iberia.
A ferry capsizes on Lake Kariba, Zimbabwe, leaving at least 97 people dead.
A magnitude-7.4 earthquake strikes Chocó Department, Colombia, leaving at least 319 people dead.

On this day

August 21

Xá Lợi Pagoda, raided by South Vietnamese special forces

1717 – Austro-Turkish War: Austrian troops under Prince Eugene of Savoy captured the strategically important city of Belgrade from the Ottoman Empire.
1808 – Peninsular War: British and Portuguese forces put an end to the first French invasion of Portugal at the Battle of Vimeiro.
1942 – World War II: The Imperial Japanese Army lost the Battle of the Tenaru, the first of its three major land offensives during the Guadalcanal campaign.
1963 – South Vietnamese special forces loyal to Ngô Đình Nhu, the brother of President Ngô Đình Diệm, raided and vandalised Buddhist pagodas (one pictured) across the country, arresting thousands and leaving hundreds dead.
2015 – Passengers on a Thalys train from Amsterdam to Paris confronted and subdued an attacker who attempted a mass shooting.

Baldwin II of Jerusalem (d. 1131)
John Claypole (b. 1625)
Ettore Bugatti (d. 1947)
Millie Bright (b. 1993)

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From today's featured list

Tomb of Aegisthus

Nine tholos tombs were constructed at the site of Mycenae in southern Greece during the Late Bronze Age. Mycenae gives its name to Mycenaean civilisation. Tholos tombs, or tholoi, are a form of monumental burial that originated in Messenia, in southwest Greece, at the end of the Middle Helladic III period (that is, c. 1700 – c. 1675 BCE). They consist of a narrow rectangular entrance passage, known as the dromos, which leads into an underground burial chamber, separated from the dromos by an entrance-way called the stomion, which would usually be sealed with a dry-stone wall. The walls of the chamber, and sometimes of the dromos, were lined with dry-stone masonry. The chamber was capped with a rounded roof constructed by the technique of corbelling, by which courses of blocks were overlapped in increasingly small circles. They were typically used for multiple burials, perhaps of members of the same family, and many were periodically re-opened for additional interments and for ritual activity. (Full list...)

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Today's featured picture

An aurora is a natural light display in Earth's upper atmosphere, caused by charged particles from the Sun colliding with atmospheric atoms. The collisions excite oxygen and nitrogen, producing colours including green, red and purple. Auroras occur mainly in high-latitude regions: the Arctic aurora is called the aurora borealis or the northern lights, while its Antarctic counterpart is the aurora australis or the southern lights. They can also occasionally appear at much lower latitudes. Forms of aurora include glows, patches, arcs, rays and coronas, consistent with auroras being shaped by Earth's magnetic field. This photograph shows an aurora borealis over Tuntorp in Lysekil Municipality, Sweden, caused by a geomagnetic storm in May 2024.

Photograph credit: Ann-Sophie Qvarnström

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