Wikipedia:Main Page history/2016 December 29

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From today's featured article

King, Roosevelt and Churchill at the Quebec Conference

The Montreal Laboratory in Montreal, Canada, was established by the National Research Council of Canada during World War II to undertake nuclear research in collaboration with the United Kingdom. After the Fall of France, some French scientists escaped to Britain with their stock of heavy water, and joined the British Tube Alloys project to build an atomic bomb. In 1942, it was decided to relocate the work to Canada. The Montreal Laboratory was established in a house belonging to McGill University, but moved to the Université de Montréal in March 1943. The first laboratory staff arrived at the end of 1942. John Cockcroft became director in May 1944. In August 1943, Mackenzie King, Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill (pictured) negotiated the Quebec Agreement, which merged Tube Alloys with the Manhattan Project. Work moved to the Chalk River Laboratories, which opened in 1944, and the Montreal Laboratory was closed in July 1946. Two reactors were built at Chalk River: the small ZEEP, which went critical in September 1945, and the larger NRX, which followed in July 1947, and was for a time the most powerful research reactor in the world. (Full article...)

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Did you know...

Tale of the Three Dead and the Three Living

... that the Petites Heures of Jean de France, Duc de Berry (page pictured) show the "rupture in style" that occurred in French illumination at the end of the fourteenth century?
... that on 29 November 2016, Ben Woodburn became Liverpool's youngest ever goalscorer when he scored against Leeds United in the EFL Cup?
... that Iris Murdoch's first book, Sartre: Romantic Rationalist, was the first book about Jean-Paul Sartre's work to be published in English?
... that the bearded scrub robin disappeared from Hluhluwe–Umfolozi Game Reserve after tsetse deterrent was sprayed there in the 1940s, but had recolonised the area by 1975?
... that Mirjam Wiesemann made award-winning audiobooks for Cybele Records, introducing in music and conversation the composers Hartmann, Apostel, Henze, Boulez, Jacqueline Fontyn and Juan Allende-Blin?
... that the now non-existent Lake Tauca formerly covered large parts of the Altiplano of South America?
... that the Nuclear Reactor Building on the University of Washington campus in Seattle was designed with large glass windows to "proudly showcase" the reactor?

In the news

Carrie Fisher

American actress, screenwriter, and author Carrie Fisher (pictured) dies at the age of 60, and her mother, actress and dancer Debbie Reynolds, dies one day later at the age of 84.
English singer, songwriter, and record producer George Michael dies at the age of 53.
A Tupolev Tu-154 crashes near Sochi, Russia, killing all 92 people on board, including 64 members of the Alexandrov Ensemble.
The United Nations Security Council adopts a resolution condemning Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
Scientists announce the first vaccine shown to be effective against Ebola.
Syrian government forces retake control of the besieged areas of Aleppo.

On this day...

December 29: Independence Day in Mongolia (1911)

Tian Tan Buddha

1170 – Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Becket was slain in his own cathedral by four knights of Henry II of England.
1779 – American Revolutionary War: British soldiers under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Archibald Campbell captured Savannah, Georgia.
1891 – Physical education teacher James Naismith introduced a game in Springfield, Massachusetts, with thirteen rules and nine players on each team that he called "Basket Ball".
1911 – Sun Yat-sen was elected in Nanjing as the Provisional President of the Republic of China.
1959 – Physicist Richard Feynman gave a speech entitled "There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom", which is considered the birth of nanotechnology.
1993 – The Tian Tan Buddha (pictured), at the time the world's tallest outdoor bronze statue of the seated Buddha, was completed.

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Today's featured picture

Koi feeding at the United States National Arboretum in Washington, D.C. Koi are ornamental varieties of domesticated common carp (Cyprinus carpio) that are kept for decorative purposes in outdoor koi ponds or water gardens. Varieties are distinguished by coloration, patterning, and scalation. Some major colors are white, black, red, yellow, blue, and cream.

Photograph: Arden

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