scientific developments, especially nuclear, chemical and biological
weapons, as part of the Manhattan Project during World War II. Colonel
Boris Pash, a former Manhattan Project security officer, was the
mission's commander, and Samuel Goudsmit was its scientific leader. They
joined the advancing Allied units, and occasionally operated behind
enemy lines, first in Italy, and later in France and Germany. Gathering
information on the German nuclear project, mission personnel captured
and dismantled the German experimental nuclear reactor at Haigerloch
(pictured) in a daring raid behind German lines in April 1945. They took
senior German researchers into custody, including Otto Hahn, Max von
Laue, Werner Heisenberg and Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker. They
searched for personnel, records, and materials that might be useful, to
make them available for Allied research and to keep them out of Soviet
hands. Over 1,000 tons of uranium ore was recovered by the mission,
along with stocks of heavy water.
Read more: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alsos_Mission>
_______________________________
Today's selected anniversaries:
1867:
U.S. Secretary of State William H. Seward negotiated the
purchase of Alaska for US$7.2 million from Russia.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_Purchase>
1899:
A committee of the German Society of Chemistry invited other
national scientific organizations to appoint delegates to form the
International Committee on Atomic Weights.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commission_on_Isotopic_Abundances_and_Atomic_Weights>
1918:
Bolshevik and Dashnak forces suppressed a Muslim revolt in
Baku, Azerbaijan, resulting in up to 12,000 deaths.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_Days>
1940:
Second Sino-Japanese War: Wang Jingwei was officially installed
by Japan as head of a puppet state in China.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wang_Jingwei>
1981:
Trying to impress actress Jodie Foster, obsessed fan John
Hinckley, Jr. shot and wounded U.S. President Ronald Reagan and three
others outside the Hilton Hotel in Washington, D.C.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attempted_assassination_of_Ronald_Reagan>
_____________________________
Wiktionary's word of the day:
eat crow:
(chiefly US, idiomatic) To recognize that one has been shown to be
mistaken or outdone, especially by admitting that one has made a
humiliating error.
<https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/eat_crow>
___________________________
Wikiquote quote of the day:
The more I think it over, the more I feel that there is nothing
more truly artistic than to love people.
--Vincent van Gogh
<https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Vincent_van_Gogh>
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