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From today's featured article

The Stamper brothers

Knight Lore is a 1984 action-adventure game that popularised isometric graphics in video games. It was developed and published for the ZX Spectrum by Ultimate Play the Game and written by Chris and Tim Stamper (pictured). Each monochrome castle room consists of blocks to climb, obstacles to avoid, and puzzles to solve. The game's novel image masking technique, Filmation, let images appear to pass atop and behind each other without distortion. By delaying the release until 1984, Ultimate was able to release several titles quickly before other developers could copy the style. Critics considered its technical solutions and isometric 3D style a harbinger of future game design. They praised the game's controls and atmosphere of mystery, but noted its difficult gameplay and criticised its sound and occasional graphical slowdown. It was named game of the year by the Golden Joystick Awards and Popular Computing Weekly readers. Though it was not the first isometric 3D video game, Knight Lore popularised the format; its influence also persisted in computer role-playing games. The game was later included in Rare's 2015 Xbox One retrospective compilation, Rare Replay. (Full article...)

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Did you know...

Jade burial suit of King Zhao Mo

... that archaeologists Mai Yinghao and Huang Zhanyue led the excavation of the 2,000-year-old mausoleum of King Zhao Mo (jade burial suit pictured)?
... that the 1999 FIFA Women's World Cup, which began 20 years ago today, was moved to large American football stadiums after the success of the 1996 Olympics soccer tournament?
... that suspected drug lord Edelio López Falcón was known as "The Lord of the Horses"?
... that Italy bombed a Swedish hospital in Dolo during the Second Italo-Ethiopian War?
... that Ellen Schwiers, who starred as Buhlschaft at the Salzburg Festival and in a film in 1961, founded a touring theatre company with her husband and daughter?
... that the marine worm Themiste pyroides is unusual in that it forms swarms when breeding?
... that Naomi Koshi is the youngest woman ever elected mayor of a Japanese city?
... that Marvel Comics published a parody of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue featuring artwork of superheroes in bathing suits?

In the news

Mohamed Morsi

Former President of Egypt Mohamed Morsi (pictured) dies during his trial, at the age of 67.
An outbreak of acute encephalitis in Bihar, India, results in the deaths of more than 100 children.
A power outage affects Argentina, Uruguay and parts of Paraguay.
In golf, Gary Woodland wins the U.S. Open at Pebble Beach.
In basketball, the Toronto Raptors defeat the Golden State Warriors, becoming the first Canadian team to win the NBA Finals.

On this day

June 19: Juneteenth in some parts of the United States

Lou Gehrig baseball card

325 – The original Nicene Creed, a statement of belief widely used in Christian liturgy, was adopted at the First Council of Nicaea.
1816 – The Hudson's Bay Company and the North West Company, rival fur-trading companies, engaged in a violent confrontation in present-day Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.
1939 – American baseball player Lou Gehrig (pictured) was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, now commonly known in the United States as "Lou Gehrig's Disease".
1987 – Basque separatist group ETA detonated a car bomb at the Hipercor shopping centre in Barcelona, killing 21 people and injuring 45 others.
2009 – War in Afghanistan: British forces began Operation Panther's Claw, in which more than 350 troops made an aerial assault on Taliban positions in Southern Afghanistan.

Leo Jud (d. 1542) · Douglas Haig, 1st Earl Haig (b. 1861) · Erna Schneider Hoover (b. 1926)

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Today's featured picture

Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun and is known as the "Red Planet" due to its reddish appearance as seen from Earth. The planet is named after Mars, the Roman god of war. A terrestrial planet, Mars has a thin atmosphere and surface features reminiscent both of the impact craters of the Moon and the volcanoes, valleys, deserts and polar ice caps of the Earth. The planet has the highest mountain in the Solar System, Olympus Mons, as well as the largest canyon, Valles Marineris. Mars's rotation period and seasonal cycles are also similar to those of the Earth. Of all the planets in the Solar System other than Earth, Mars is the most likely to harbour liquid water and perhaps life. There are ongoing investigations assessing Mars's past potential for habitability, as well as the possibility of extant life. Future astrobiology missions are planned, including NASA's Mars 2020 rover and the European Space Agency (ESA)'s Rosalind Franklin rover. In November 2016, NASA reported finding a large amount of underground ice in the Utopia Planitia region of the planet. The volume of water detected has been estimated to be equivalent to the volume of water in Lake Superior. Mars has two moons, Phobos and Deimos, which are small and irregularly shaped.

This picture is a true-colour image of Mars, taken from a distance of about 240,000 kilometres (150,000 mi) by the OSIRIS instrument on ESA's Rosetta spacecraft, during its February 2007 flyby of the planet. The image was generated using OSIRIS's orange (red), green and blue filters.

Photograph credit: European Space Agency

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