Articles

On July 20, 1969, American astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin set foot on the lunar surface – the first men on the moon. The US space agency, NASA, is celebrating the 50th anniversary of this historic event in style – by restoring and reopening the control room that handled the historic Apollo 11 mission. Today it is a museum, but it looks every bit alive and real as it did in 1969, as though engineers and scientists just stepped away for a moment. Lesia Bakalets visited the control room. Anna Rice narrates her story. more »

Rembrandt’s group portrait of officers and other civic guardsmen of District 2 in Amsterdam under the command of Captain Frans Banninck Cocq and Lieutenant Willem van Ruytenburch has been known since the 18th century as simply The Night Watch. It is the artist’s most ambitious painting. One of Amsterdam’s 20 civic guard companies commissioned the painting for its headquarters, the Kloveniersdoelen, and Rembrandt completed it in 1642. It is Rembrandt’s only civic guard piece, and it is famed for the lively and daring composition that portrays the troop in active poses rather than the traditional static ones. more »

On April 18, 2019, the Department of Justice released the "Report on the Investigation into Russian Interference in the 2016 Presidential Election", also known as the Mueller Report. This audio is courtesy of Timberlane Media, which recorded the full report as a podcast. C-Span.org is repeating the report. Former Special Counsel Robert Mueller will be testifying before the House Judiciary Committee and Intelligence Committees on the Russia investigation and the published report released by his office on Wednesday, July 24, 2019 more »

Gerardo Ramirez, a central Texas dairy worker, was near his home but taking an unusual route to a children’s hospital in April when he drove his Volkswagen Jetta into a flooded section of road, not seeing in the pre-dawn dark that heavy rains had turned a tiny creek into a death trap. Ramirez survived, but his wife and two children drowned. In March, 800 miles away in Lee County, Alabama, 23 people ranging in age from 6 to 93 were killed in a 170 mph tornado — despite an evacuation warning by local authorities just like ones that many residents had heeded in previous storms this year. The deadly situations illustrate what experts increasingly see as two common reasons for unnecessary storm deaths: unfamiliar terrain that leads to bad decisions, and people ignoring too-familiar warnings that haven’t panned out in the past. more »