User:Highfields/MP

01:47, Tuesday, 3 June 2025

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Featured Article

No. 2 Squadron Canberra, which Evans flew in Vietnam

Selwyn David Evans (3 June 1925 – 2 September 2020) was a senior commander of the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) and a writer and consultant on defence matters. He was a member of the Australian contingent in the Berlin Airlift, then a VIP captain with the Governor-General's Flight, the latter of which earned him the Air Force Cross. In the 1960s, Evans was twice posted to No. 2 Squadron, where he flew Canberra jet bombers (example pictured) and was awarded the Distinguished Service Order after completing a tour in Vietnam. He became Chief of Air Force Operations and was later promoted to Chief of the Air Staff. Evans was appointed Companion of the Order of Australia in 1984. Retiring from the RAAF in 1985, he was a board member and advisor to British Aerospace Australia, and chairman of the National Capital Authority. In 2001, he was awarded the Centenary Medal for his services to the Australian Defence Force and the Canberra community. (Full article...)

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In The News

Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o

Kenyan writer and activist Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o (pictured) dies at the age of 87.
Flooding submerges the town of Mokwa, Nigeria, leaving more than 200 people dead.
In sumo, Ōnosato Daiki is promoted to yokozuna.
In association football, Liverpool win the Premier League title.
In the Surinamese general election, the National Democratic Party wins the most seats in the National Assembly.

Picture Of The Day

The eastern quoll (Dasyurus viverrinus) is a medium-sized carnivorous marsupial in the dasyurid family, and one of six extant species of quolls. Endemic to Australia, the species occurs on the island of Tasmania, and was formerly found across much of southeastern mainland Australia before becoming functionally extinct there in the 1960s. Eastern quolls are about the size of a small domestic cat and have a thick, light fawn or near-black, coat with white spots. They are solitary predators, hunting at night for their prey of insects, small mammals, birds, and reptiles. This fawn-morph eastern quoll was photographed in Upper Esk, Tasmania.

Photograph credit: Charles J. Sharp

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On This Day

June 3: Martyrs Day in Uganda;

Silhouette of Jack Jouett

1781 – American Revolutionary War: Jack Jouett (pictured) rode 40 miles (64 km) to warn Thomas Jefferson and the Virginia legislature of British cavalry who had been sent to capture them.
1892 – Liverpool F.C., one of England's most successful football clubs, was founded.
1937 – Half a year after abdicating the British throne, Edward, Duke of Windsor, married American socialite Wallis Simpson in a private ceremony in France.
1969 – During a SEATO exercise in the South China Sea, a collision between HMAS Melbourne and USS Frank E. Evans resulted in the latter vessel being cut in two and the deaths of 74 personnel.
1982 – A failed assassination attempt was made on Shlomo Argov, the Israeli ambassador to the United Kingdom, triggering an Israeli decision to invade Lebanon three days later.

Garret Hobart (b. 1844)
Eric A. Havelock (b. 1903)
Franz Kafka (d. 1924)
Pierre Poilievre (b. 1979)

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Featured List

Burledge Hillfort

There are numerous Iron Age hillforts and ancient settlements in Somerset, a ceremonial county in South West England. Somerset is a rural county of rolling hills, such as the Mendip Hills, the Quantock Hills and Exmoor National Park, and large flat expanses of land including the Somerset Levels. Some locations were later reused in the Dark Ages, such as Cadbury Castle, Worlebury Camp and Ham Hill. Other hillforts, such as Small Down Knoll, Solsbury Hill, Dolebury Warren and Burledge Hill (pictured), may have had a domestic purpose as well as a defensive role. In addition to the hillforts, several sites have been identified as settlements during the pre-Roman period, including Cambria Farm and the "Lake Villages" at Meare and Glastonbury, which were built on a morass, on an artificial foundation of timber filled with brushwood, bracken, rubble and clay. (Full list...)

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Did You Know?

Medway Street footbridge

... that after the Medway Street footbridge had become twisted (pictured) in the 2010 Canterbury earthquake, part of it was turned into a memorial?
... that the first defendants indicted for the crime of apartheid have not yet faced trial?
... that the Saxe–Goldstein hypothesis has been used to explain burial practices in Greece, Australia, Madagascar and Peru?
... that surveyors in colonial Pennsylvania may have deliberately excluded fertile land from a tract granted to the Okehocking people in 1703?
... that the German explorer Gustav Conrau shot himself in 1899 to avoid recapture, according to a later report by his local interpreter?
... that the creator of what is considered the world's first escape room attributed his idea to playing the online Flash game Crimson Room?
... that a Long Island TV station sued a columnist for satirizing its signal and programming?
... that the music video for "The Kids from Yesterday" by My Chemical Romance was directed by a fan?
... that Scott Burnside received journalism awards for writing about shift work, murders, and ice hockey?