Apollo 13

Apollo 13.
Apollo 13 (April 11–17, 1970) was the seventh crewed mission in the Apollo space program and the third meant to land on the Moon. The landing was aborted after an oxygen tank in the service module (pictured) failed two days into the mission. Apollo 13 was commanded by Jim Lovell with Jack Swigert as command module (CM) pilot and Fred Haise as lunar module (LM) pilot. Swigert was a late replacement for Ken Mattingly, who was grounded after exposure to rubella. After the explosion, the CM's systems had to be shut down to conserve resources, forcing the crew to transfer to the LM as a lifeboat. Although the LM was designed to support two men for two days, Mission Control improvised new procedures so it could support three men for four days. The astronauts' peril briefly renewed interest in the Apollo program; tens of millions watched the splashdown in the South Pacific Ocean by television. The story of Apollo 13 has been dramatized, most notably in the 1995 film Apollo 13.

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Hygrophoropsis aurantiaca

Hygrophoropsis aurantiaca.
Hygrophoropsis aurantiaca, the false chanterelle, is a species of fungus in the family Hygrophoropsidaceae. It is found across several continents, growing in woodland and heathland, and sometimes on woodchips used in gardening and landscaping. Its mushrooms are yellow-orange with a funnel-shaped cap up to 8 cm (3 1⁄8 in) across that has a felt-like surface. The thin, often forked gills on the underside of the cap run partway down the length of the otherwise smooth stalk. The mushroom can be mildly poisonous. Austrian naturalist Franz Xaver von Wulfen described the false chanterelle in 1781, noting both its resemblance to the true chanterelles and people's propensity to confuse them. The false chanterelle was then placed in the genus Clitocybe, but it was later observed that its forked gills and dextrinoid spores indicated a relationship to Paxillus. Genetic analysis has confirmed that it belongs to the order Boletales and is more closely related to boletes.

Fir Clump Stone Circle

Fir Clump Stone Circle.
Fir Clump Stone Circle was an ancient monument in Burderop Wood near Wroughton in the south-western English county of Wiltshire. It was one of at least seven stone circles known to have been built in northern Wiltshire south of Swindon, but none of them remain. The ring was part of a tradition of stone circle construction that spread throughout much of Britain, Ireland and Brittany during the Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age, between 3300 and 900 BCE. The purpose of such monuments is unknown, although archaeologists speculate that the stones represented supernatural entities. Around the 1860s, the megaliths in Fir Clump Stone Circle were levelled, but some of them were rediscovered in 1965 by the archaeologist Richard Reiss, who described and measured the monument. In 1969, these stones were removed during construction of the M4 motorway.

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Gerard (archbishop of York)

Gerard (archbishop of York).
Gerard (died 1108) was Archbishop of York between 1100 and 1108 and Lord Chancellor of England from 1085 until 1092. A Norman, he was a member of the cathedral clergy at Rouen before becoming a royal clerk under King William I of England, who appointed him Lord Chancellor. He continued in that office under King William II Rufus, who rewarded him with the Bishopric of Hereford in 1096. Soon after Henry I's coronation, Gerard was appointed to the recently vacant see of York, and became embroiled in the dispute between York and the see of Canterbury concerning which archbishopric had primacy over England. He secured papal recognition of York's jurisdiction over the church in Scotland but was forced to accept Canterbury's authority over York. He also worked on reconciling the Investiture Controversy between the king and the papacy over the right to appoint bishops until the controversy's resolution in 1107. Because of rumours, as a student of astrology, that he was a magician and a sorcerer, and also because of his unpopular attempts to reform his clergy, he was denied a burial inside York Minster but his remains were later moved into the cathedral.

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