User:Highfields/MP

On This Day...

May 12

B-17 bombers intercepting the Rex

• 1743 – War of the Austrian Succession: Habsburg ruler Maria Theresa was crowned Queen of Bohemia after driving French troops from the territory.
• 1938 – During an exercise to demonstrate air power, United States Army Air Corps bomber aircraft intercepted the Italian ocean liner SS Rex (pictured) 620 nautical miles (1,100 km) off the US Atlantic coast.
• 1948 – The United Kingdom publicly announced that it was independently developing nuclear weapons, after the US Atomic Energy Act of 1946 ended cooperation on the matter.
• 1968 – Vietnam War: The 1st Australian Task Force began the defence of Fire Support Base Coral in the largest unit-level action of the war for the Australian Army.
• 1998 – Four students were shot and killed by Indonesian soldiers at Trisakti University in Jakarta, which led to widespread riots and the resignation of President Suharto nine days later.

Did You Know...

COSMOS field, imaged by CFHT

• ... that the COSMOS field (pictured) is the largest contiguous survey of the universe ever taken by the Hubble Space Telescope?
• ... that Harrogate War Memorial, by Ernest Prestwich, names 1163 casualties of the First and Second World Wars, of whom more than 300 have unknown graves, and the youngest was 15 years old?
• ... that within a week of its upload, YouTube Rewind 2018: Everyone Controls Rewind became YouTube's most-disliked video of all time?
• ... that no voting was held in four out of six curiae in the 1916 Warsaw City Council election, as the Polish and Jewish parties had agreed on a single joint candidate slate?
• ... that Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority general manager Phillip Eng brews his own beer?
• ... that the oldest complete versions of the Book of Jonah and 1 Peter are from a 3rd-century codex discovered in Egypt in 1952?
• ... that social media influencer Andrew Tate described himself as "absolutely a misogynist"?
• ... that when the Bukharian-Jewish Soviet newspaper Bajroqi Miⱨnat switched to the Latin script, it initially did not use capital letters, following Jewish writing rules?
• ... that actress Edna May Sperl's fiancé was arrested on the day of her wedding by a federal marshal because her fiancé's father opposed the marriage?