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Today's featured article

Model of Thunderbird 2

Thunderbirds is a British science fiction television series created by Gerry and Sylvia Anderson. It was their fifth series to be made using Supermarionation (a form of electronic marionette puppetry) combined with scale model effects sequences. Two series were made, totalling 32 episodes. Thunderbirds follows the exploits of International Rescue, a lifesaving organisation led by ex-astronaut Jeff Tracy. Its missions are carried out using the Thunderbird machines (one pictured), a fleet of five vehicles piloted by Jeff's sons. Thunderbirds premiered on the ITV network on 30 September 1965 and has aired in at least 66 countries. Widely considered the Andersons' most popular and commercially successful series, it has been praised for its effects, music and title sequence. A real-life search and rescue service, the International Rescue Corps, took its name from the series. Thunderbirds was followed by two feature films in the 1960s, a live-action film in 2004 and a remake, Thunderbirds Are Go, in 2015. (Full article...)

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Did you know ...

Asik-Asik Falls

... that the water of Asik-Asik Falls (pictured) comes from a source inside a cliff?
... that Mokulubete Makatisi placed eighth at the 2022 Commonwealth Games women's marathon despite running in new shoes that she had received late during the race?
... that the developer of The Crimson Diamond first created a series of pixel-art rooms and later built a game around the house she had designed?
... that some of the work of lesbian feminist filmmaking pioneer Norma Bahia Pontes is lost media?
... that while soldiers carried out relief operations for Tropical Storm Kai-tak, the New People's Army attacked them?
... that Milan A. P. Harminc, the consul-general of the Slovak Republic in London, broke with his government at the outbreak of World War II and sided with the Allies?
... that there was a doomsday cult named after Neo from The Matrix?
... that "Europapa" was the first song in the history of the Eurovision Song Contest to be disqualified after the start of the contest?
... that a woman was considered a witch because her husband prepared chocolate instead of her?

In the news

Shigeru Ishiba

More than 18 people die in flooding and landslides in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Shigeru Ishiba (pictured) becomes Prime Minister of Japan after winning the Liberal Democratic Party leadership election.
Amid escalating tensions in the Middle East, Israel invades Lebanon, and Iran launches missiles against Israel.
Flooding in Nepal leaves more than 250 people dead, including 37 in the nation's capital, Kathmandu.
In Australian rules football, the Brisbane Lions defeat the Sydney Swans to win the AFL Grand Final.

On this day

October 7

Anna Politkovskaya

1763 – King George III issued a royal proclamation that forbade British settlement of much of newly acquired French territory in North America, reserving the land for indigenous peoples.
1849 – American writer Edgar Allan Poe died under mysterious circumstances at Washington Medical College four days after being found on the streets of Baltimore, Maryland, in a delirious and incoherent state.
1914 – Japan captured Pohnpei from Germany, eventually leading to large-scale Japanese immigration to Micronesia.
1944 – The Holocaust: Sonderkommando work-unit members in Auschwitz concentration camp revolted upon learning that they were due to be killed; although a few managed to escape, most were massacred on the same day.
2006 – Anna Politkovskaya (pictured), a Russian journalist and human-rights activist, was assassinated in the elevator of her apartment block in Moscow.

Guru Gobind Singh (d. 1708)
Harold Geiger (b. 1884)
Helmut Lent (d. 1944)
Charlotte Perrelli (b. 1974)

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From today's featured list

Sir Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford

The Rumford Medal is an award bestowed by the Royal Society for "outstanding contributions in the field of physics". The award is named in honour of British scientist Sir Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford (pictured), who is noted for his works on thermodynamics and for establishing the Royal Institution. Thompson received the inaugural award in 1800. Since its inception, the Rumford Medal has been granted to 108 scientists as of 2024. It has been awarded sixty-seven times to a citizen of the United Kingdom, seven times to a Dutch citizen, and four times to a Swedish citizen. The medal has been jointly awarded to multiple individuals on two occasions: to Philipp Lenard and Wilhelm Röntgen in 1896, and to Charles Fabry and Alfred Perot in 1918. From 1800 to 2018, the Rumford Medal was awarded biennially; since then it has been awarded annually. The most recent recipient is British physicist Tony Bell, who received it in 2024. (Full list...)

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Today's featured picture

Iolanthe is a comic opera with music by Arthur Sullivan and a libretto by W. S. Gilbert. First performed in 1882 as the seventh Gilbert and Sullivan operatic collaboration, it tells the story of Iolanthe, a fairy banished from fairyland because she married a mortal. Her son Strephon, half a fairy, loves Phyllis, whom all the members of the House of Peers wish to marry. Phyllis sees Strephon embracing Iolanthe (as fairies never age, she appears to be seventeen) and assumes that he is unfaithful, not realizing that Iolanthe is his mother, setting off a climactic confrontation between the peers and the fairies. The opera satirises many aspects of British government, law and society. Iolanthe was the first new theatre production in the world to be illuminated entirely by electric lights. It premiered at the Savoy Theatre and ran there for 398 performances, with a simultaneous production in New York. It is still played throughout the English-speaking world and beyond. This poster by H. M. Brock was produced for an early-20th-century tour production of Iolanthe by the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company.

Poster credit: H. M. Brock; restored by Adam Cuerden

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