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Today's featured article
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...)
Did you know...
- ... 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 on the eve of 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 the government used military trucks and bulldozers to rescue people from a tropical storm?
- ... 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 a woman was considered a witch because her husband prepared chocolate instead of her?
In the news
- More than 26 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
- 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)
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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