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Today's featured article
Lise Meitner (1878–1968) was an Austrian-Swedish nuclear physicist who was instrumental in the discovery of nuclear fission and protactinium. In 1905, she became the second woman from the University of Vienna to earn a doctorate in physics. She spent much of her scientific career at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Chemistry in Berlin. In 1938 she fled Nazi Germany and moved to Sweden. That year, chemists Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann demonstrated that isotopes of barium could be formed by neutron bombardment of uranium. Meitner and her nephew Otto Robert Frisch correctly interpreted their results and worked out the physics of this process, which they named "fission". The discovery led to the development of atomic bombs and nuclear reactors during World War II. Meitner did not share the 1944 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the discovery of fission, which was awarded to Hahn alone, but she received many other honours, including the posthumous naming of element 109 as meitnerium in 1997. (Full article...)
Did you know...
- ... that Louis Malet de Graville (coat of arms pictured) began a successful career at the centre of French politics after his father was captured by the English?
- ... that an Ohio TV station bribed ABC to obtain a network affiliation, only to lose it within the year?
- ... that the Loyang Tua Pek Kong Temple in Singapore houses effigies of both the Jade Emperor and Mahaganapati?
- ... that Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton spent the last 50 years of her life preserving Alexander Hamilton's and George Washington's legacies?
- ... that most of the films produced by the Huaju Film Company starred its co-founder and his girlfriend?
- ... that Demi Lovato changed a lyric from "Cool for the Summer" for Revamped to reflect pride in her sexuality?
- ... that young male African bush elephants in musth killed about 49 white rhinoceros in Pilanesberg National Park between 1992 and 1997?
- ... that Scholastique Dianzinga edited a post-independence history of women in the Republic of the Congo that discussed why women's emancipation has been hindered?
- ... that a host of the Longform.org podcast once interviewed a writer while accidentally high on edibles?
In the news
- The 49th imam of Nizari Isma'ilism, Aga Khan IV (pictured), dies at the age of 88 and is succeeded by his son, Aga Khan V.
- Eleven people are killed in a mass shooting at an adult education centre in Örebro, Sweden.
- At the Grammy Awards, "Not Like Us" by Kendrick Lamar wins Record of the Year and Beyoncé's Cowboy Carter wins Album of the Year.
- A Learjet 55 crashes into multiple buildings in Philadelphia, United States, killing at least 7 people and injuring 24 others.
On this day
February 8: Feast day of Saint Josephine Bakhita (Catholicism); Military Foundation Day in North Korea (1948)
- 421 – Honorius declared Constantius III to be his co-emperor of the Western Roman Empire.
- 1250 – Seventh Crusade: The Ayyubid Sultanate of Egypt defeated and captured King Louis IX of France at the Battle of Fariskur.
- 1575 – William of Orange founded Leiden University, the oldest university in the Netherlands.
- 1960 – The official groundbreaking of the Walk of Fame took place in Hollywood, Los Angeles, in California.
- 1968 – Law enforcement officers in Orangeburg, South Carolina (pictured), fired into a crowd of college students who were protesting segregation, killing three and injuring twenty-seven others.
- Jack Lemmon (b. 1925)
- Valerie Thomas (b. 1943)
- A. Chandranehru (d. 2005)
- Mary Wilson (d. 2021)
Today's featured picture
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The Lost World is a 1925 American silent fantasy giant monster adventure film, directed by Harry O. Hoyt and written by Marion Fairfax, adapted from Arthur Conan Doyle's 1912 novel of the same name. The film's premiere was at the Astor Theatre in New York City on February 8, 1925. Directed by Harry O. Hoyt
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