The Space Shuttle was a partially reusable low Earth orbital spacecraft system operated from April 12, 1981, to July 21, 2011, by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration in the United States. Launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, five Space Shuttle orbiter vehicles flew on a total of 135 missions during 30 years. They conducted science experiments in orbit, helped build the International Space Station, and launched numerous satellites, interplanetary probes, and the Hubble Space Telescope. Four fully operational orbiters were initially built: Columbia, Challenger, Discovery (pictured), and Atlantis. Lost in mission accidents were Challenger in 1986 and Columbia in 2003, with a total of fourteen astronauts killed. A fifth operational orbiter, Endeavour, was built in 1991 to replace Challenger. The Space Shuttle was retired from service upon the conclusion of Atlantis's final flight.

Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle

_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:

1831:

Broughton Suspension Bridge near Manchester, England, collapsed, reportedly because of mechanical resonance induced by troops marching in step across the bridge. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broughton_Suspension_Bridge

1861:

Confederate forces began bombarding Fort Sumter in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina, starting the American Civil War. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Fort_Sumter

1961:

Aboard Vostok 1, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin performed the first human spaceflight, completing one orbit of Earth in 108 minutes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuri_Gagarin

2013:

Four Chadian soldiers were killed in a suicide bombing by jihadist rebels in Kidal, Mali. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_Kidal_suicide_attack

_____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day:

push the envelope: (intransitive, idiomatic, originally aeronautics) To go beyond established limits; to pioneer. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/push_the_envelope

___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day:

I have heard something said on this and a former occasion about allegiance to the South. I know no South, no North, no East, no West, to which I owe any allegiance. I owe allegiance to two sovereignty, and only two: one is the sovereignty of this Union, and the other is the sovereignty of the state of Kentucky. My allegiance is to this Union and to my state; but if gentlemen suppose they can exact from me an acknowledgement of allegiance to any ideal or future contemplated confederacy of the South, I here declare that I owe no allegiance to it; nor will I, for one, come under any such allegiance if I can avoid it.   --Henry Clay https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Henry_Clay