Wikipedia:Main Page history/2021 March 28

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From today's featured article

The Manned Orbiting Laboratory (MOL) was part of the human spaceflight program of the United States Air Force. The MOL evolved into a space station, for which crews would be launched on 30-day missions, and then return to Earth using a Gemini B spacecraft derived from NASA's Gemini spacecraft. The MOL program was officially announced in December 1963 as a platform to prove the utility of putting people in space for military missions; its use for satellite reconnaissance was a secret black project. Seventeen astronauts were selected for the program, including Major Robert H. Lawrence Jr., the first African American to be chosen as an astronaut. Budget cuts repeatedly caused postponement of the first operational flight, and improvements in technology reduced the benefits of a crewed space platform over an automated one. A single uncrewed test flight of the Gemini B spacecraft was conducted on 3 November 1966, but the MOL was canceled in June 1969 without any crewed missions being flown. (Full article...)

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Did you know ...

Composition with Grid No. 1

... that the 1918 painting Composition with Grid No. 1 (pictured) by Piet Mondrian is based on the golden ratio?
... that Arora Akanksha, the first millennial candidate for Secretary-General of the United Nations, believes the organisation is wasteful?
... that "Wer unterm Schutz des Höchsten steht", a hymn paraphrasing Psalm 91, has been recommended instead of the psalm in the Liturgy of the Hours, and for memorial services after disasters?
... that only posthumously was Patrick Francis Healy described as the first black American to become a Jesuit, earn a Ph.D., and become the president of a predominantly white university?
... that the Battery Maritime Building was used as a musical installation while it was awaiting redevelopment?
... that Sandra Wolin, a physician-microbiologist, devised an early ribosome profiling method as a postdoctoral researcher in Peter Walter's lab at the University of California, San Francisco?
... that three-quarters of the animated film A Goofy Movie had to be reshot due to a single dead pixel on a faulty monitor, leading to a delayed release?
... that to attract commercial investment, stones were installed on Stone Street in New York City?

In the news

Ever Given blocking the Suez Canal

The cargo ship Ever Given runs aground and blocks the Suez Canal (satellite image shown), resulting in a traffic jam of more than 300 vessels.
A fire at the Rohingya refugee camp near Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh, kills at least 15 people and injures hundreds of others.
In Australia, floods in New South Wales force the evacuation of more than 18,000 people.
Samia Suluhu Hassan becomes the first female president of Tanzania, following the death of John Magufuli at the age of 61.

On this day

March 28: First day of Passover (Judaism, 2021)

HMS Campbeltown during the St Nazaire Raid

193 – The Praetorian Guard assassinated Roman emperor Pertinax and sold the imperial office in an auction to Didius Julianus.
1918 – World War I: British and Australian troops soundly defeated a German force at the First Battle of Dernancourt.
1942 – Second World War: The port of Saint-Nazaire in occupied France was disabled by British naval forces (ship pictured).
1946 – The US Department of State released the Acheson–Lilienthal Report, a proposal for international control of nuclear weapons.
1999 – Serbian police and special forces killed about 93 Kosovo Albanians in the village of Izbica in the Drenica region of central Kosovo.

Yekaterina Vorontsova-Dashkova (b. 1743)
Ernst Lindemann (b. 1894)
Harold Agnew (b. 1921)

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Today's featured picture

The Birds' Head Haggadah is the oldest surviving illuminated manuscript of the Haggadah, a ritual text recounting the story of Passover, the liberation of the Israelites from slavery in ancient Egypt, recited by participants at a Seder. The Ashkenazi Jewish manuscript was produced in the Upper Rhine region of Southern Germany in the early 14th century, with the text copied by a scribe named Menahem. All Jewish men, women, and children depicted in the manuscript have human bodies with the faces and beaks of birds, while non-Jewish and non-human faces are blank or blurred. Numerous theories have been advanced to explain the unusual iconography, usually tied to Jewish aniconism. The manuscript was owned by the German politician Ludwig Marum in the 20th century, and is now in the possession of the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, where it is on permanent exhibition.

Manuscript credit: Menahem; photographed by the Israel Museum

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