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Today's featured article

Konon Molody

The Portland spy ring was an espionage group active in the United Kingdom between 1953 and 1961. It comprised five people who obtained classified research documents from the Admiralty Underwater Weapons Establishment (AUWE) on the Isle of Portland, Dorset, and passed them to the Soviet Union. Two of the group, Harry Houghton and Ethel Gee worked at the AUWE and had access to classified information. They passed this to their handler, Konon Molody (pictured), a KGB agent acting under a Canadian passport in the name Gordon Lonsdale. Lonsdale would pass the documents to Lona and Morris Cohen, American communists living under the names Helen and Peter Kroger; they passed the information to Moscow. The ring was exposed in 1960 after a tip-off from the Polish spy Michael Goleniewski. The information he supplied was enough to identify Houghton. MI5 surveillance uncovered the rest of the group, who were arrested in January 1961 and tried that March. Sentences for the group ranged from 15 to 25 years. (Full article...)

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Selected anniversaries

April 29

HMS Endeavour

1760 – Seven Years' War: France began an unsuccessful attempt to retake Quebec City, which had been captured by Britain.
1770 – On his first voyage, British explorer James Cook and the crew of HMS Endeavour (pictured) landed at Botany Bay, making the first recorded European landfall on the eastern coast of Australia.
1945 – World War II: The U.S. Army liberated Dachau, the first Nazi concentration camp, and killed German prisoners of war.
1995 – Before a crowd of about 165,000 at the Rungrado 1st of May Stadium, Ric Flair and Antonio Inoki competed in the main event of Collision in Korea, the highest attended professional wrestling event of all time.
2015 – The ringleaders of the Bali Nine were executed in Indonesia for attempting to smuggle 8.3 kg (18 lb) of heroin to Australia in 2005.

George Farquhar (d. 1707)
Marietta Blau (b. 1894)
John Compton (b. 1925)
Giacomo dalla Torre (d. 2020)

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In the news

Port of Shahid Rajaee

An explosion and fire (pictured) at the Port of Shahid Rajaee, Iran, kills at least 70 people and injures more than 1,200 others.
At least 11 people are killed in a car-ramming attack at a street festival in Vancouver, Canada.
Militants attack a group of tourists in Indian-administered Kashmir, killing 26 people.
Pope Francis dies at the age of 88.

Did you know...

Solfrid Koanda

... that Solfrid Koanda (pictured) qualified for her first weightlifting competition a few days after starting the sport?
... that the Joint Operations Command was created based on lessons learned from the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami?
... that a village in North Sulawesi traces its founding to exiles from the Java War?
... that Continuity by Andre Wee at Hume MRT station presents a stylised cross-sectional view of the historical Former Ford Factory?
... that the first governor of Macau Francisco Mascarenhas took the Fortaleza do Monte as the governor's residence from the Jesuits through a ruse?
... that construction of a Pittsburgh TV station was delayed when it was discovered that abandoned mine shafts ran beneath the planned tower site?
... that American football coach Jorge Munoz served as an assistant to a former player he coached?
... that the birth of Christianity in Minahasa, Indonesia, is celebrated annually on June 12, the day that Johann Friedrich Riedel set foot in Manado?
... that protesters launched a Garbage Offensive on New York City?

Today's featured picture

Picture of the day

Mount Whymper is a 2,845-metre-high (9,334 ft) mountain located in the Canadian Rockies in the Canadian province of British Columbia. Located in the Vermilion Pass in Kootenay National Park, it is named after Edward Whymper, who, along with four guides (Joseph Bossoney, Christian Kaufmann, Christian Klucker, and Joseph Pollinger), was the first to climb the mountain in 1910. Mount Whymper is composed of sedimentary rock laid down during the Precambrian to Jurassic periods as part of the Laramide orogeny. This panoramic photograph shows the southeastern aspect of Mount Whymper, as seen from the Stanley Glacier Trail, with Stanley Valley in the foreground.Photograph credit: The Cosmonaut

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