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Shepard on the Moon during Apollo 14

Alan Shepard (November 18, 1923 – July 21, 1998) was an American astronaut, naval aviator, test pilot, and businessman. In 1961 he became the second person and the first American to travel into space, and in 1971 he walked on the Moon (pictured). Shepard saw action with the surface navy during World War II. He became a naval aviator in 1947, and a test pilot in 1951. He was one of NASA's original Mercury Seven astronauts in 1959, and in May 1961 he made his first spaceflight: Mercury-Redstone 3, the first crewed Project Mercury flight. In 1971, he commanded the Apollo 14 mission, piloting the Apollo Lunar Module Antares. He became the fifth and the oldest person to walk on the Moon, and the only one of the Mercury Seven astronauts to do so. He was promoted to rear admiral in 1971, and was the first astronaut to reach that rank. He was Chief of the Astronaut Office from November 1963 to July 1969, and from June 1971 to April 1974. He retired from NASA and the United States Navy in July 1974. (Full article...)

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... that Stella Alexander, the first female mayor of Issaquah, was nicknamed "Madame Mussolini" by her detractors?
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In the news

Pedro Sánchez

Pedro Sánchez (pictured) is invested as Prime Minister of Spain, after proposing amnesty for Catalan separatists and then receiving support from them.
In the Myanmar civil war, opposition forces capture multiple cities in a major offensive against the ruling military junta.
In stock car racing, Ryan Blaney wins the NASCAR Cup Series championship.
In baseball, the Hanshin Tigers defeat the Orix Buffaloes to win the Japan Series.

On this day

November 18

Flag of Solomon Islands

1583 – The Siege of Godesberg, the first major siege of the Cologne War, began.
1977 – Solomon Islands ratified the adoption of a new flag (pictured).
1978 – Jim Jones led more than 900 members of the Peoples Temple to mass murder/suicide in Jonestown, Guyana, hours after some of its members assassinated U.S. Congressman Leo Ryan.
2003 – With its ruling in Goodridge v. Department of Public Health, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court made the state the first in the U.S. to legalize same-sex marriage.
2017 – Cyclone Numa, a rare "medicane", made landfall in Greece to become the worst weather event that the country had experienced since 1977.

Philibert Commerson (b. 1727)
Mitsuyo Maeda (b. 1878)
Wilma Mankiller (b. 1945)
Maribel Domínguez (b. 1978)

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Featured picture (Check back later for today's.)

Wheat Fields is a series of dozens of paintings by Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh. The close association of peasants and the cycles of nature particularly interested Van Gogh, such as the sowing of seeds, harvest and sheaves of wheat in the fields. Van Gogh saw ploughing, sowing and harvesting as symbolic of man's efforts to overwhelm the cycles of nature. This oil painting on canvas titled Wheat Fields, also sometimes known as Wheat Field with Alpilles Foothills in the Background, was painted in June 1888 and is now in the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.

Painting credit: Vincent van Gogh

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