Wikipedia:Main Page history/2022 September 17b
From today's featured article
NASA Astronaut Group 2 was the second group of astronauts selected by NASA; their names were announced on September 17, 1962. President Kennedy had announced Project Apollo, with the goal of putting a man on the Moon by the end of the decade, and more astronauts were required to fly the two-person Gemini spacecraft and three-person Apollo spacecraft then under development. The Mercury Seven had been selected for the simpler task of orbital flight, but the challenges of space rendezvous and lunar landing led to the selection of candidates with advanced engineering degrees (for four of the nine) as well as test pilot experience. The nine were Neil Armstrong, Frank Borman, Pete Conrad, Jim Lovell, James McDivitt, Elliot See, Tom Stafford, Ed White and John Young. Six of the nine flew to the Moon (Lovell and Young twice), and Armstrong, Conrad and Young walked on it as well. Seven of the nine were awarded the Congressional Space Medal of Honor. (This article is part of a featured topic: NASA Astronaut Group 2.)
Did you know ...
- ... that Thomas Moran's 1872 painting The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone (pictured) influenced the decision to preserve Yellowstone National Park for future generations?
- ... that Tala Bashmi played on the Bahrain women's national football team for seven years before opening a restaurant in a Manama hotel?
- ... that when The Papers of Benjamin Franklin is completed, it is expected to contain approximately 30,000 writings in 47 volumes?
- ... that Liu Yunbin, the son of the second president of the People's Republic of China, was a graduate in radiochemistry and contributed to the development of China's first atomic bomb?
- ... that Taylor Swift announced her upcoming album, Midnights, while accepting the 2022 Video of the Year award?
- ... that when Bill Renwick was asked to review a neo-Nazi case at the University of Waikato it was meant to take three weeks, but instead took nearly two years?
- ... that women- and minority-owned businesses built the Frequent Express high-capacity bus line in Portland, Oregon?
- ... that during the 1970s, future Indonesian president Habibie would go to a specific noodle shop every lunchtime?
In the news
- In television, Ted Lasso (lead actor Jason Sudeikis pictured) wins best comedy and Succession wins best drama at the Primetime Emmy Awards.
- French filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard dies at the age of 91.
- More than 210 soldiers die in renewed fighting in the border crisis between Armenia and Azerbaijan.
- A magnitude 7.6 earthquake strikes Papua New Guinea, leaving at least seven people dead.
On this day
September 17: Constitution Day in the United States (1787)
- 1630 – Puritan settlers from England founded the city of Boston in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, naming it after Boston, Lincolnshire, the origin of several prominent colonists.
- 1775 – American Revolutionary War: The Continental Army under Richard Montgomery began the Siege of Fort St. Jean in the British province of Quebec.
- 1939 – World War II: The Soviet Union invaded Poland from the east, sixteen days after Nazi Germany's attack on the country from the west.
- 1958 – Tintin in Tibet, the twentieth volume of The Adventures of Tintin by the Belgian cartoonist Hergé and which he regarded as his favourite in the series, began serialisation.
- 1970 – The Jordanian army entered Amman as part of operations to oust Palestinian fedayeen from the country in events later known as Black September (smoke over city pictured).
- Elizabeth Canning (b. 1734)
- Narendra Modi (b. 1950)
- Mandawuy Yunupingu (b. 1956)
Today's featured picture
In linguistics, a distinctive feature is the most basic unit of phonological structure that distinguishes one speech sound from another within a language. They are grouped into categories according to the natural classes of segments they describe: major class features, laryngeal features, manner features, and place features. These feature categories are in turn further specified on the basis of the phonetic properties of the segments in question. This Euler diagram illustrates a typical classification of speech sounds, represented in the International Phonetic Alphabet, with the relationship between manners of articulation and related categories, including distinctive features. Diagram credit: Nardog |
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