Wikipedia:Main Page history/2019 August 6

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Analog Science Fiction and Fact is an American science fiction magazine, first published in 1930 as Astounding Stories of Super-Science. After F. Orlin Tremaine was hired as editor in 1933, it became the leading magazine in the nascent pulp science fiction field, with well-regarded stories such as Jack Williamson's Legion of Space and "Twilight" by John W. Campbell. Campbell took over editorial duties from 1937 to 1971, running many stories that became classics in the field, including Isaac Asimov's Foundation series, A. E. van Vogt's Slan, and novels and stories by Robert A. Heinlein. By 1950, Astounding was no longer regarded as the leader in the field, though it did continue to publish popular and influential stories, including Hal Clement's novel Mission of Gravity (1953) and Tom Godwin's "The Cold Equations" (1954). Ben Bova took over as editor from 1972 to 1978, winning five consecutive Hugo Awards. Trevor Quachri currently edits the magazine for Crosstown Publications. (Full article...)

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Did you know...

The Carron Bridge arching over the River Spey

... that the Carron Bridge (pictured) was the last cast-iron railway bridge to be built and used in Scotland?
... that Isoldé Elchlepp began her career as a protest song singer and later appeared as Wagner's Ortrud at the Bayreuth Festival and as Schoeck's Penthesilea at the Staatsoper Hannover?
... that an inscription at the tomb of Isa Khan claims that it is an "asylum of paradise"?
... that Murtaja Qureiris, the youngest political prisoner in Saudi Arabia, is a member of the Shia minority who may face execution for taking part in anti-government protests when he was 10 years old?
... that the Creole Petroleum Corporation's 1956 propaganda film Assignment: Venezuela sought to convince American oil workers that the anti-capitalist military dictatorship had embraced the American way of life?
... that William Pope created "the first comprehensive, well executed pictorial record of Canadian birds"?
... that in a 2019 court case, the US Supreme Court ruled that Wyoming's statehood did not void the Crow Tribe's right to hunt on unoccupied lands?
... that Charles Clarke acted as a watcher for The Great Escape and helped forge papers for the escapees?

In the news

Egan Bernal

In the United States, 32 people are killed and more than 50 others are injured during separate mass shootings in El Paso, Texas, and in Dayton, Ohio.
A prison riot in Altamira, Brazil, leaves 58 people dead.
In cycling, Colombian Egan Bernal (pictured) becomes the first Latin American to win the Tour de France.
Incumbent President of Tunisia Beji Caid Essebsi dies at the age of 92, and Mohamed Ennaceur is named as his interim replacement.

On this day

August 6

Meteorite fragment ALH84001

1777 – American Revolutionary War: The Battle of Oriskany, one of the bloodiest battles in the North American theater of the war, was fought about 6 mi (10 km) east of Fort Stanwix, New York.
1991 – British computer programmer Tim Berners-Lee first posted files describing his ideas for a system of interlinked, hypertext documents accessible via the Internet, to be called a "World Wide Web".
1996 – A team of researchers led by NASA scientists announced that the meteorite known as ALH84001 (pictured), discovered in the Allan Hills of Antarctica, may contain evidence of life on Mars, but further tests were inconclusive.
2013 – An explosion in Rosario, Argentina, caused by a large gas leak collapsed a nearby building and led to the deaths of 22 people.

Stephen V of Hungary (d. 1272) · George Kenney (b. 1889) · Jennie de la Montagnie Lozier (d. 1915)

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Today's featured picture

Curiosity is a car-sized rover designed to explore the crater Gale on Mars as part of NASA's Mars Science Laboratory mission. It was launched from Cape Canaveral in November 2011 and landed on Aeolis Palus inside Gale on August 6, 2012, at 05:17 UTC. Curiosity's landing site, nicknamed Bradbury Landing, was less than 2.4 km (1.5 mi) from the center of the rover's touchdown target after a 560-million km (350-million mi) journey. The rover's goals include an investigation of the Martian climate and geology; assessment of whether the selected field site inside Gale has ever offered environmental conditions favorable for microbial life, including investigation of the role of water; as well as planetary habitability studies in preparation for human exploration.

This picture is a self-portrait of Curiosity on Mars at the "Big Sky" drilling site, where it collected a rock sample at the foothills of Aeolis Mons (Mount Sharp) in October 2015. The photograph combines dozens of images taken by the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) camera at the end of the rover's robotic arm; the arm itself is not included, although its shadow is visible on the ground. Wrist motions and turret rotations on the arm allowed MAHLI to acquire the mosaic's component images.

Photograph credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / MSSS

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