The Roswell incident is a conspiracy theory that alleges that debris from a United States Army Air Forces balloon (pictured) recovered in 1947 near Roswell, New Mexico, was part of a crashed extraterrestrial spacecraft. The debris was from the top-secret Project Mogul, which used high-altitude balloons to detect nuclear tests. Roswell Army Air Field personnel, unaware of Mogul, gathered the material and announced the recovery of a "flying disc"; the statement was retracted within a day. To obscure the source of the debris, the Army reported that it was a conventional weather balloon. In 1978, retired Air Force officer Jesse Marcel revealed that the weather balloon had been a cover story and speculated that the debris was extraterrestrial. This became the basis for long-lasting and increasingly complex and contradictory UFO conspiracy theories, none of which have any factual basis. The conspiracy narrative has become a common trope in fiction. The town of Roswell promotes itself as a UFO tourism destination.

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

_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:

1914:

RMS Britannic, the third and largest Olympic-class ocean liner of the White Star Line after RMS Olympic and RMS Titanic, was launched at the Harland & Wolff shipyard in Belfast. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMHS_Britannic

1979:

The Superliner railcar entered revenue service with Amtrak. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superliner_%28railcar%29

1995:

Barings Bank, the oldest merchant bank in London, was declared insolvent after its head derivatives trader in Singapore, Nick Leeson, lost £827 million while making unauthorised trades on futures contracts. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Leeson

2014:

Former editor-in-chief of Hong Kong newspaper Ming Pao Kevin Lau was stabbed, prompting concerns and protests about media freedom. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knife_attack_on_Kevin_Lau

_____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day:

zymurgy: 1. Synonym of zymology (“the chemistry of fermentation with yeasts, especially the science involved in beermaking and winemaking”) 2. The practice of using fermentation to produce alcoholic beverages. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/zymurgy

___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day:

Those are rare who fall without becoming degraded; there is a point, moreover, at which the unfortunate and the infamous are associated and confounded in a single word, a fatal word, Les Misérables.   --Les Misérables https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Les_Mis%C3%A9rables