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Today's featured article

Researchers celebrating the naming of nihonium

Nihonium is a synthetic chemical element with symbol Nh and atomic number 113. It is extremely radioactive; its most stable known isotope, nihonium-286, has a half-life of about 10 seconds. In the periodic table, nihonium is a transactinide element at the intersection of period 7 and group 13. Its creation was reported in 2003 by a Russian–American collaboration at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna, Russia, and in 2004 by a team of Japanese scientists at Riken in Wakō, Japan. The discoveries were confirmed by independent teams working in the United States, Germany, Sweden, and China. In 2015 the element was officially recognised by the IUPAC/IUPAP Joint Working Party; naming rights were assigned to Riken, as they were judged to have been first to confirm their discovery. The name, approved in the same year (announcement pictured), derives from a Japanese word for Japan, Nihon. Few details are known about nihonium, as it has only been formed in very small amounts that decay away within seconds. (Full article...)

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In the news

Plaza Murillo surrounded by soldiers

In Bolivia, troops led by Juan José Zúñiga storm the presidential palace in an attempted coup (pictured).
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is released from prison as part of a U.S. plea bargain.
Protesters attack the Parliament Buildings in Nairobi, Kenya, leaving 19 people dead and at least 160 others injured.
A fire at a lithium battery factory in the South Korean city of Hwaseong leaves at least 23 people dead, many of them Chinese migrant workers.

Did you know?

Bermuda onion

... that the Bermuda onion (pictured) was so closely associated with Bermuda that the island's inhabitants became known as "onions"?
... that a U.S. Navy plane piloted by Michael Wettlaufer clipped the tower of a Florida TV station while on a training mission, forcing it off the air for nearly five years?
... that military officer Chris Tanasale was selected as the mayor of Ambon, Indonesia, to prevent the alienation of local Christians?
... that YouTube co-founder Jawed Karim has updated the description of his video "Me at the zoo" on multiple occasions to criticize the website's business decisions?
... that the Nazis killed more than fifty Dutch nationals in retaliation for the assassinations of Hendrik Seyffardt and Hermannus Reydon by the Dutch resistance?
... that fifteen future Pro Football Hall of Fame players have been drafted by the Detroit Lions?
... that a 2007 pop-punk song by Fall Out Boy was named after Michael Jackson's Thriller and begins with a monologue by rapper Jay-Z?
... that the shopping cart is "the ultimate litmus test for whether a person is capable of self-governing", according to the shopping cart theory?
... that a book about book banning was banned?

On this day...

June 29: Feast of Saints Peter and Paul (Western Christianity)

Engraving of the Woldegk tornado

1764 – One of the strongest tornadoes in history (pictured) struck Woldegk in present-day northeastern Germany, killing one person.
1864 – A passenger train fell through an open swing bridge into the Richelieu River near present-day Mont-Saint-Hilaire, Quebec, killing as many as 99 people and injuring 100 others in Canada's worst railway accident.
1889 – Hyde Park and several other Illinois townships voted to be annexed by Chicago, forming the largest city by area in the United States and the second-largest by population.
1927 – The United States Army Air Corps aircraft Bird of Paradise landed at Wheeler Field on the Hawaiian island of Oahu to complete the first transpacific flight.
1995 – Atlantis became the first U.S. Space Shuttle to dock with the Russian space station Mir as part of the Shuttle–Mir program.

Ralph Allen (d. 1764)
Elisabet Ney (d. 1907)
David Rubinger (b. 1924)
Jane Birdwood (d. 2000)

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Today's featured picture

The Battle of Inab, also called the Battle of Ard al-Hâtim or Fons Muratus, was fought on 29 June 1149 during the Second Crusade. The Zengid army of Nur al-Din Zengi destroyed the combined army of Raymond of Poitiers and the Assassins of Ali ibn-Wafa. The Principality of Antioch was subsequently pillaged and reduced in size as its eastern border was pushed west, and both Raymond and his ally ibn-Wafa were killed. This illustration by Jean Colombe was taken from the 14th-century manuscript Passages d'outremer and depicts the Battle of Inab in the main image above, with the recovery of Raymond's body depicted below. It is part of a volume of 66 such full-page miniatures.

Illustration credit: Jean Colombe

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