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From today's featured article

The Sun, viewed through a clear solar filter

The Sun is the star at the center of the Solar System. It is a nearly perfect sphere of hot plasma, heated to incandescence by nuclear fusion reactions in its core, radiating energy from its surface mainly as light and infrared radiation. It is a G-type main-sequence star (G2V), informally called a yellow dwarf, though its light is actually white. It formed about 4.6 billion years ago and is by far the most important source of energy for life on Earth. From Earth the Sun is 1 astronomical unit (1.496×10⁸ km) or about 8 light-minutes away. Its diameter is about 1,391,400 km (864,600 mi), 109 times that of Earth. Its mass is about 330,000 times that of Earth, making up about 99.86% of the total mass of the Solar System. Every second, the Sun fuses about 600 billion kilograms (kg) of hydrogen into helium and converts 4 billion kg of matter into energy. Venerated in many cultures, it is a central subject for astronomical research since antiquity. (This article is part of a featured topic: Solar System.)

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Did you know ...

Ibrahim Adil Shah II Hawking

... that an inscription on the painting Ibrahim Adil Shah II Hawking (pictured) identifies its subject as an emperor, even though he was not?
... that Japanese singer Cindy was once said to have an "angel voice"?
... that Ronald Reagan's friends thought that his official White House portrait did not look like him?
... that Kwek Leng Joo co-created an exhibition combining modern photography and traditional Chinese painting?
... that the library of the Institut Français d'Archéologie de Beyrouth contained about 24,000 volumes by 1970?
... that one scholar regards an Old Irish oath as a scholarly Christian invention, but another sees it as the descendant of a Proto-Indo-European oath?
... that Evan Honer was told by American Idol judge Luke Bryan to "stick to diving"?
... that by the First Treaty of London England was to gain a quarter of France?
... that Wayne Davenport, in a six-year span, went from playing college football to coaching football, returning to college, playing in the NFL, returning to coaching and then back to college football?

In the news

Nightclub fire damage

Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip kill more than 400 people, ending the Gaza war ceasefire.
A nightclub fire (damage pictured) in Kočani, North Macedonia, kills at least 59 people and injures more than 155 others.
In Yemen, 53 people are killed after the United States launches air and naval strikes.
At least 42 people are killed as a result of storms and tornadoes in the Midwestern and Southern United States.
The People's United Party, led by Johnny Briceño, wins the Belizean general election.

On this day

March 20: Nowruz (2025)

Chemical structure of zidovudine

1724 – Following the death of Pope Innocent XIII, a papal conclave convened in Rome to elect a new pope.
1861 – An earthquake occurred in the Argentine province of Mendoza, causing at least 6,000 deaths and destroying most of the buildings in the province's capital city.
1922 – The United States Navy commissioned its first aircraft carrier, USS Langley.
1944 – World War II: U.S. Marines made a landing on Emirau Island in the Bismarck Archipelago to develop an airbase as part of Operation Cartwheel.
1987 – The antiretroviral drug zidovudine (chemical structure pictured) became the first treatment approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for HIV/AIDS.
2014 – Taliban militants killed nine civilians in a mass shooting at the Kabul Serena Hotel in Afghanistan.

Maud Menten (b. 1879)
Willie Brown (b. 1934)
Fernando Torres (b. 1984)
Christel Boom (d. 2004)

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Today's featured picture

The Hitch-Hiker is a 1953 American independent film noir thriller co-written and directed by Ida Lupino and starring Edmond O'Brien, William Talman, and Frank Lovejoy. Based on the 1950 killing spree of Billy Cook, the film follows two friends who are taken hostage by a murderous hitchhiker during an automobile trip to Mexico. The Hitch-Hiker was the first American mainstream film noir directed by a woman, and premiered in Boston on March 20, 1953, to little fanfare. The film was marketed with the tagline: "When was the last time you invited death into your car?" It was selected in 1998 for preservation in the United States National Film Registry as being "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant".

Film credit: Ida Lupino

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