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Today's featured article

Makemake and its moon

Makemake is a dwarf planet orbiting the Sun beyond Neptune. It has a diameter 60% that of Pluto, and is the fourth-largest trans-Neptunian object and the largest member of the Solar System's classical Kuiper belt, a disk of icy bodies beyond Neptune's orbit. Its discovery on March 31, 2005, by American astronomers Mike Brown, Chad Trujillo and David Rabinowitz at Palomar Observatory contributed to the reclassification of Pluto as a dwarf planet in 2006. Makemake's surface, like Pluto's, is largely covered by frozen methane and stained reddish-brown by tholins. It has one known satellite, unnamed, whose orbit suggests that Makemake's rotation has a high axial tilt. Makemake shows evidence of geochemical activity and cryovolcanism, which has led scientists to suspect that it might harbor a subsurface ocean of liquid water. No high-resolution images of its surface exist because it has not been visited up close by a space probe. (This article is part of a featured topic: Solar System.)

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In the news

Jalen Brunson

In basketball, the New York Knicks win the NBA Finals (MVP Jalen Brunson pictured).
Elon Musk becomes the world's first US-dollar trillionaire after his company SpaceX raises the largest initial public offering.
English artist David Hockney dies at the age of 88.
In athletics, Ja'Kobe Tharp sets a new world record in men's 110 metres hurdles.

On This Day

June 15

1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo

1520 – Leo X issued the papal bull Exsurge Domine, censuring 41 propositions from Martin Luther's Ninety-five Theses and subsequent writings, and threatening him with excommunication unless he recanted.
1896 – A magnitude-8.5 earthquake and a subsequent tsunami struck Japan, killing at least 22,000 people and destroying about 9,000 homes.
1920 – Three African-American circus workers were lynched by a mob in Duluth, Minnesota, a crime that shocked the country for having taken place in the Northern United States.
1991 – An eruption of Mount Pinatubo (pictured) in the Philippines deposited large amounts of particulate matter into the atmosphere, enough to lower global temperatures by about 0.5 °C (0.9 °F).
2006 – US president George W. Bush designated 140,000 square miles (360,000 km²) around the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands as the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument, now one of the world's largest protected areas.

Eadburh of Winchester (d. 960)
Mehmed Rashid Pasha (d. 1876)
John B. Fenn (b. 1917)
Mohamed Muizzu (b. 1978)

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Did you know...

Seth Van Neerden

... that a world-championship-medalist swimmer (pictured) called his sport "one of the dullest in existence"?
... that the houses in New York City's Henderson Place Historic District have been described as "gingerbread-type" and likened to dollhouse architecture?
... that actor Erwan Kepoa Falé said that sex was his escape from grief after the death of his father?
... that "almost every road in Sikka had campaign posts" during the 2018 regency election campaign?
... that the title of the 2026 album The World Is to Dig was inspired by a 1952 children's book?
... that John Kinsey remained speaker of the New Jersey colonial assembly despite moving to Pennsylvania?
... that nighttime programming on Romania's Tele7ABC in 2000 consisted of the poet Adrian Păunescu and a "crumpled blue curtain"?
... that, when James Baker was U.S. secretary of state, he banned Benjamin Netanyahu from the department's headquarters?
... that softball player Laura Taylor scored only four home runs in high school, but then became one of the top home run-hitters in college history?

Featured Pictures

Commons picture of the day

Mountain gorilla (Gorilla beringei beringei), Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, Uganda

Picture of the day

Virgin and Child with Four Angels is a small oil painting on panel by the Early Netherlandish artist Gerard David, probably completed around 1510 to 1515. It shows the Virgin Mary holding the Christ Child, while two angels crown her as Queen of Heaven and two others play musical instruments at her sides. Set in a walled garden before a view of Bruges, the work was created for private devotion. It was influenced by Jan van Eyck's Virgin and Child at a Fountain, but presents Mary and Jesus in a more human manner rather than as remote iconic deities. The work has been in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York since 1977.Painting credit: Gerard David

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Todays featured list

Today's featured list is: June 15.

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