Saturn is the sixth planet from the Sun and the second-largest in the Solar System, after Jupiter. Named after the Roman god of agriculture, it is a gas giant with an average radius about nine times that of Earth. Although it has only one-eighth the average density of Earth, it is over 95 times more massive. The planet probably has a core of iron–nickel and rock, surrounded by a deep layer of metallic hydrogen, an intermediate layer of liquid hydrogen and liquid helium, and a gaseous outer layer. Ammonia crystals give the upper atmosphere a pale yellow hue. Electrical current within the metallic hydrogen layer is thought to give rise to the planetary magnetic field. Wind speeds can reach 1,800 km/h (500 m/s), higher than on Jupiter, but not as high as on Neptune. A prominent ring system with nine continuous main rings and three smaller arcs is composed mostly of ice particles, with some rocky debris and dust. Saturn has hundreds of moonlets and at least 62 moons, including Titan, the second-largest moon in the Solar System and the only one with a substantial atmosphere.
Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn
_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:
1398:
The Grand Duke of Lithuania Vytautas the Great and the Grand Master of the Teutonic Knights Konrad von Jungingen signed the Treaty of Salynas, the third attempt to cede Samogitia to the Knights. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Salynas
1798:
The Peasants' War began in Overmere, Southern Netherlands, with peasants taking up arms against the French occupiers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peasants%27_War_(1798)
1917:
First World War: New Zealand troops suffered more than 2,000 casualties, including more than 800 deaths, in the First Battle of Passchendaele, making it the nation's largest loss of life in one day. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Battle_of_Passchendaele
1960:
Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev reportedly pounded his shoe on a desk during the Plenary Meeting of the United Nations General Assembly in response to Filipino delegate Lorenzo Sumulong's assertion of Soviet colonial policy being conducted in Eastern Europe. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoe-banging_incident
1992:
A 5.8 MB earthquake struck south of Cairo, Egypt, killing 545 people. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1992_Cairo_earthquake
_____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day:
ratiocination: 1. Reasoning, conscious deliberate inference; the activity or process of reasoning. 2. Thought or reasoning that is exact, valid and rational. 3. A proposition arrived at by such thought. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ratiocination
___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day:
Modern morality and manners suppress all natural instincts, keep people ignorant of the facts of nature and make them fighting drunk on bogey tales. … Knowing nothing and fearing everything, they rant and rave and riot like so many maniacs. The subject does not matter. Any idea which gives them an excuse of getting excited will serve. They look for a victim to chivy, and howl him down, and finally lynch him in a sheer storm of sexual frenzy which they honestly imagine to be moral indignation, patriotic passion or some equally avowable emotion. --Aleister Crowley https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Aleister_Crowley