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From the day after tomorrow's featured article

The Albona class were mine-warfare ships used by the Italian Regia Marina and the Royal Yugoslav Navy (KM). Fourteen ships were originally laid down between 1917 and 1918 for the Austro-Hungarian Navy. The end of World War I and the dissolution of Austria-Hungary left them incomplete until 1920, when three ships were finished for the Regia Marina. An additional five ships were completed for the KM in 1931. All the completed ships could carry 24 to 39 naval mines. The five ships in KM service were captured by Italian forces during the Axis invasion of Yugoslavia and commissioned in the Regia Marina. Three of the ships were returned to the KM-in-exile in late 1943 until they were transferred to the Yugoslav Navy in August 1945. The three surviving ships were stricken in 1962 and 1963. (This article is part of a featured topic: Ships of the Royal Yugoslav Navy.)

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Did you know ...

Orbits of some fictional planets of the Solar System

... that fictional planets of the Solar System (diagram pictured) include planets between Venus and Earth, planets on the inside of a hollow Earth, and a planet "behind the Earth"?
... that Sonya Friedman developed the idea of supertitles, which translate words being sung on stage in opera?
... that multiple scenes in Papa feature cotton-tree flowers, even though it was not scripted and the falling cotton simply kept drifting into the shot?
... that Canadian rapper Apt Exact, who has been described as "not gangster", was elected to the Legislative Assembly of British Columbia in 2024?
... that the Canaanite ivory comb contains the earliest known sentence in a Canaanite language?
... that schools in Wales during the Second World War were held in village halls?
... that Kathryn Maple won the Sunday Times Watercolour Competition twice in three years?
... that the apartment building the Manhasset caught fire in 1999, just as its renovation was being completed?
... that Chen Dingshan has been called the last heir of the Mandarin Ducks and Butterflies school?

In the news (For today)

location of truck-ramming attack

Eleven people are killed and thirty-six others are injured in a truck-ramming and shooting attack in New Orleans, Louisiana (street pictured).
Former president of the United States and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Jimmy Carter dies at the age of 100.
Jeju Air Flight 2216 crashes at Muan International Airport, South Korea, killing 179 people.
Acting president and prime minister of South Korea Han Duck-soo is impeached by the National Assembly.

In two days

January 3

Painting of the Battle of Princeton

250 – Decius ordered all people in the Roman Empire (except Jews) to perform a sacrifice to the Roman gods, resulting in widespread persecution of Christians.
1777 – American Revolutionary War: American forces commanded by George Washington defeated British troops at the Battle of Princeton (depicted).
1959 – As a result of the Alaska Statehood Act, the Territory of Alaska became the 49th U.S. state, and the first outside the contiguous United States.
1990 – United States invasion of Panama: Manuel Noriega, the deposed strongman of Panama, surrendered to American forces outside the apostolic nunciature in Panama City.
2002 – Second Intifada: Israeli forces seized MV Karine A, which was carrying 50 tons of smuggled weapons on behalf of the Palestinian Authority.

George Monck, 1st Duke of Albemarle (d. 1670)
Antoine Thomson d'Abbadie (b. 1810)
Savitribai Phule (b. 1831)
Frenchy Bordagaray (b. 1910)

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From the day after tomorrow's featured list

Gardner Dozois

The Hugo Award for Best Professional Editor is one of the Hugo Awards given each year for science-fiction or fantasy stories published or translated into English during the previous calendar year. The award is presented to editors of magazines, novels, anthologies, or other works related to science fiction or fantasy. The Best Professional Editor award was first presented in 1973. Since 2007, the award has been split into two categories: Best Editor (Short Form) and Best Editor (Long Form). The Short Form award is for editors of anthologies, collections or magazines, while the Long Form award is for editors of novels. Since 1996, retrospective Hugo Awards (Retro Hugos) have been occasionally awarded for years 50, 75, or 100 years prior in which no awards were given. During the 60 nomination years from, 92 editors have been nominated for the original Best Professional Editor award, the Short Form or Long Form categories, or the Retro Hugos. Gardner Dozois (pictured) has received the most Best Professional Editor awards, with fifteen wins from nineteen nominations for the original award, and one win from two nominations for the Short Form category. (Full list...)

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Duck and Cover is a 1951 American civil-defense animated and live-action social guidance film, directed by Anthony Rizzo. Often mischaracterized as propaganda, it has similar themes to more adult-oriented civil-defense training films. It was widely distributed to schoolchildren in the United States in the 1950s, and teaches students what to do in the event of a nuclear explosion. The film starts with an animated sequence showing Bert, an anthropomorphic turtle, who is attacked by a monkey holding a lit firecracker or stick of dynamite on the end of a string. Bert ducks into his shell as the charge goes off; it destroys both the monkey and the tree in which he is sitting, but Bert is left unharmed. The film then switches to live footage as a narrator explains what children should do when they see the flash of an atomic bomb while in various environments. It is suggested that by ducking down low in the event of a nuclear explosion, such as crawling under desks, children would be safer than they would be standing. In 2004, Duck and Cover was selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the National Film Registry for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

Film credit: Anthony Rizzo

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