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From today's featured article

Green Park is a London Underground station on the north side of Green Park, with entrances on both sides of Piccadilly. It is in fare zone 1 and is a busy interchange between the Jubilee, Piccadilly and Victoria lines, used by over 39 million passengers in 2017. The station was opened on 15 December 1906 by the Great Northern, Piccadilly and Brompton Railway and was originally named Dover Street. It was modernised in the 1930s when escalators replaced lifts and new entrances were provided on Piccadilly. The Victoria line platforms opened on 7 March 1969 and the Jubilee line platforms opened on 1 May 1979 with the official opening journeys by Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Charles starting from this station. Improvements in the 2000s made the station wheelchair accessible throughout. The original station building designed by Leslie Green has been demolished. Decorative elements around the station include tiling schemes by Hans Unger and June Fraser and stonework by John Maine. (Full article...)

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Did you know...

Cover of the book Der geteilte Himmel

... that Christa Wolf's Der geteilte Himmel (cover pictured), published in East Germany in 1963, was called a "socialist bestseller"?
... that Andrey Starovoytov, the general secretary of the Soviet Union Ice Hockey Federation for 17 years, negotiated Soviet participation in the Summit Series?
... that despite Shrub's Wood Long Barrow in Kent being nearly 30 m (100 ft) high, it was not discovered until about 1970?
... that Xing Shizhong was promoted for his performance in the Sino-Vietnamese War and later served as president of a university that trains China's top military officers?
... that Rosana Sullivan, director of the animated short Kitbull, said that she identified with the kitten in the film?
... that though Isaac Komnenos was his oldest surviving son, John II Komnenos chose Isaac's younger brother Manuel to succeed him as Byzantine emperor?
... that Dumelow's Seedling is known by more than 50 alternative names?
... that Robert Nasmyth was Surgeon-Dentist to Queen Victoria in Scotland while his brother Alexander was Surgeon-Dentist to her in England?

In the news

Pedro Sánchez

In a snap general election, the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (leader Pedro Sánchez pictured) wins the most seats in both houses of the Cortes Generales.
Flooding and winds from Cyclone Kenneth kill at least 45 people, injure more than 200 others, and cause serious damage in Mozambique and the Comoro Islands.
An earthquake in Luzon, the Philippines, kills at least 18 people.
Volodymyr Zelensky wins the Ukrainian presidential election.

On this day

May 1: Beltane in Ireland and Scotland; Maharashtra Day in Maharashtra, India

Empire State Building

880 – The Nea Ekklesia church in Constantinople was consecrated, and went on to set the model for all later cross-in-square Orthodox churches.
1169 – Norman mercenaries landed at Bannow Bay in Leinster, marking the beginning of the Norman invasion of Ireland.
1794 – War of the Pyrenees: France regained nearly all the land it lost to Spain the previous year with its victory in the Second Battle of Boulou.
1931 – New York City's Empire State Building (pictured), at the time the tallest building in the world, opened.
1994 – Brazilian racing driver Ayrton Senna, a three-time Formula One World Champion, was killed in a crash during the 1994 San Marino Grand Prix.

Franciscus Junius the Elder (b. 1545) · Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington (b. 1769) · Eldridge Cleaver (d. 1998)

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Today's featured picture

When added to glass, thorium dioxide helps increase its refractive index and decrease its dispersion. Such glass finds applications in high-quality lenses for cameras and scientific instruments. The radiation from these lenses can darken them and turn them yellow over a period of years and degrade film, but the health risks are minimal. Yellowed lenses may be restored to their original colourless state by lengthy exposure to intense ultraviolet radiation. Thorium dioxide has since been replaced by rare-earth oxides such as lanthanum oxide in almost all modern high-index glasses, as they provide similar effects and are not radioactive.

This picture shows a yellowed thorium dioxide lens (left), a similar lens partially de-yellowed with ultraviolet radiation (centre) and a lens without yellowing (right).

Photograph credit: El Grafo

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