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>
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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>
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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>
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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>
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