The Manned Orbiting Laboratory (MOL) was part of the human spaceflight
program of the United States Air Force. The MOL evolved into a space
station, for which crews would be launched on 30-day missions, and then
return to Earth using a Gemini B spacecraft derived from NASA's Gemini
spacecraft. The MOL program was officially announced in December 1963
as a platform to prove the utility of putting people in space for
military missions; its use for satellite reconnaissance was a secret
black project. Seventeen astronauts were selected for the program,
including Major Robert H. Lawrence Jr., the first African American to
be chosen as an astronaut. Budget cuts repeatedly caused postponement of
the first operational flight, and improvements in technology reduced the
benefits of a crewed space platform over an automated one. A single
uncrewed test flight of the Gemini B spacecraft was conducted on
3 November 1966, but the MOL was canceled in June 1969 without any
crewed missions being flown.
Read more: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manned_Orbiting_Laboratory>
_______________________________
Today's selected anniversaries:
1918:
World War I: British and Australian troops soundly defeated a
German force at the First Battle of Dernancourt.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Battle_of_Dernancourt>
1942:
Second World War: The port of Saint-Nazaire in occupied France
was disabled by British naval forces (ship pictured).
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Nazaire_Raid>
1946:
The US Department of State released the Acheson–Lilienthal
Report, a proposal for international control of nuclear weapons.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acheson%E2%80%93Lilienthal_Report>
1999:
Serbian police and special forces killed about 93 Kosovo
Albanians in the village of Izbica in the Drenica region of central
Kosovo.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Izbica_massacre>
_____________________________
Wiktionary's word of the day:
atompunk:
(science fiction) A subgenre of speculative fiction, based on the
society and technology of the Atomic Age (c. 1945–1965).
<https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/atompunk>
___________________________
Wikiquote quote of the day:
Now a mediator is not a mediator of one, but God is one. Is the
law then against the promises of God? God forbid: for if there had been
a law given which could have given life, verily righteousness should
have been by the law. But the scripture hath concluded all under sin,
that the promise by faith of Jesus Christ might be given to them that
believe. But before faith came, we were kept under the law, shut up unto
the faith which should afterwards be revealed. Wherefore the law was our
schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by
faith. But after that faith is come, we are no longer under a
schoolmaster. For ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ
Jesus. For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on
Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free,
there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.
--Epistle to the Galatians
<https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Epistle_to_the_Galatians>