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The Roswell incident is a conspiracy theory that alleges that debris from a United States Army Air Forces balloon (pictured) recovered in 1947 near Roswell, New Mexico, was part of a crashed extraterrestrial spacecraft. The debris was from the top-secret Project Mogul, which used high-altitude balloons to detect nuclear tests. Roswell Army Air Field personnel, unaware of Mogul, gathered the material and announced the recovery of a "flying disc"; the statement was retracted within a day. To obscure the source of the debris, the Army reported that it was a conventional weather balloon. In 1978, retired Air Force officer Jesse Marcel revealed that the weather balloon had been a cover story and speculated that the debris was extraterrestrial. This became the basis for long-lasting and increasingly complex and contradictory UFO conspiracy theories, none of which have any factual basis. The conspiracy narrative has become a common trope in fiction. The town of Roswell promotes itself as a UFO tourism destination. (Full article...)
Did you know ...
- ... that a landscaper was hired to demolish the David and Gladys Wright House (pictured), but he hesitated when he saw the building itself?
- ... that Jorge Dias has been called "the most important Portuguese anthropologist of the 20th century"?
- ... that Gerard Way got dental work midway through the recording session for "Vampires Will Never Hurt You"?
- ... that the Jingtai Emperor was rumored to have been strangled to death by a eunuch?
- ... that UserBenchmark unlocks free testing only if users can shoot down 13 ships?
- ... that Giuseppe Panini turned a batch of unsold stickers into a company which had produced over 150 billion trading cards by 1996?
- ... that Cybermania '94 was the first televised video game awards show?
- ... that Antiqua et nova is a Vatican document that expresses serious ethical concerns surrounding the usage of artificial intelligence?
- ... that Kaiapoi Pā has been incorrectly called Kaiapohia, a pun that can be translated as 'piling up of bodies for eating'?
In the news
- In the German federal election, the CDU/CSU, led by Friedrich Merz (pictured), wins the most seats in the Bundestag.
- Archaeologists announce that the empty tomb Wadi C-4 near Luxor, Egypt, was that of the pharaoh Thutmose II.
- At the British Academy Film Awards, Conclave wins four awards, including Best Film.
- Mahamoud Ali Youssouf is elected chairman of the African Union Commission.
On this day
- 747 BC – According to Ptolemy, the reign of the Babylonian king Nabonassar (name in Akkadian pictured) began, marking a new era characterized by the systematic maintenance of chronologically precise historical records.
- 1914 – RMS Britannic, the third and largest Olympic-class ocean liner of the White Star Line after RMS Olympic and RMS Titanic, was launched at the Harland & Wolff shipyard in Belfast.
- 1979 – The Superliner railcar entered revenue service with Amtrak.
- 1995 – Barings Bank, the oldest merchant bank in London, was declared insolvent after its head derivatives trader in Singapore, Nick Leeson, lost £827 million while making unauthorised trades on futures contracts.
- 2014 – Former editor-in-chief of Hong Kong newspaper Ming Pao Kevin Lau was stabbed, prompting concerns and protests about media freedom.
- Fatima bint al-Ahmar (d. 1349)
- Archibald Campbell, 9th Earl of Argyll (b. 1629)
- Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (b. 1954)
- Jennie Smillie Robertson (d. 1981)
Today's featured picture
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Wangath temple complex is a group of Hindu temple monuments in Wangath, close to Naranag, Jammu and Kashmir, India. The current structure was built by Lalitaditya Muktapida of the Karkota dynasty in the 8th century CE but are now ruins. The temple is constructed out of local grey granite and consists of two complexes, dedicated respectively to Shiva Jyeshthesa and Shiva Bhuteshwara, with a central pavilion in between. The temple marks the starting point of pilgrimages to the Gangabal Lake, a high-altitude alpine lake in the Himalayas considered by Kashmiri Hindus to be an abode of Shiva. This photograph shows the main temple of the site's western complex. Photograph credit: Basavaraj K. Korkar; edited by UnpetitproleX
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