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Tom Eastick

Tom Eastick (3 May 1900 – 16 December 1988) was a senior Australian Army artillery officer during World War II, a post-war leader of the principal ex-service organisation in South Australia, and a justice of the peace. He commanded a field artillery regiment during the First and Second Battles of El Alamein in the Western Desert campaign in North Africa in 1942, leading to his appointment as a Companion of the Distinguished Service Order and an Efficiency Decoration award. He then commanded divisional artillery during several campaigns in New Guinea and Borneo, before being appointed military governor of the Raj of Sarawak after taking the Japanese surrender at Kuching. Post-war, he was state president of the Returned Sailors', Soldiers' and Airmen's Imperial League of Australia (the Returned & Services League from 1965) for fifteen years. He was appointed a Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George and knighted for his volunteer work on behalf of ex-servicemen. (Full article...)

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Preamplifiers at the National Ignition Facility
Preamplifiers at the National Ignition Facility

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December 16: Day of Reconciliation in South Africa

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English author Len Deighton is known for his novels, works of military history, screenplays and cookery writing. He had a varied career, including as a pastry cook, waiter, co-editor of a magazine, teacher and air steward before writing his first novel in 1962, The IPCRESS File. He continued to produce what his biographer John Reilly considers "stylish, witty, well-crafted novels" in spy fiction, including three trilogies and a prequel featuring Bernard Samson. Deighton authored two television scripts, the first of which was Long Past Glory in 1963; he also wrote a film script, Oh! What a Lovely War (1969). His long-held interest in cooking—his mother had been a professional chef and instilled a love for cuisine in her son—led to an illustrated cookery column in the Sunday newspaper The Observer, for two years. The work was collected into two later books, Len Deighton's Action Cook Book and Où est le garlic (both 1965); he subsequently wrote several other cookery books. (Full list...)

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Eye

The eye is a region of mostly calm weather at the center of a tropical cyclone. It is roughly circular, and is typically 30 to 65 kilometers (19 to 40 miles) in diameter. The eye is surrounded by the eyewall, a ring of towering thunderstorms where the most severe weather and highest winds of the storm occur. In strong tropical cyclones, the eye is characterized by light winds and clear skies, surrounded on all sides by a towering, symmetric eyewall, while in weaker storms, it is less well defined and may be covered by a central dense overcast. Weaker or disorganized storms may also feature an eyewall that does not completely encircle the eye or have an eye that features heavy rain. In all storms, however, the eye is the location of the storm's minimum barometric pressure; this can be as much as 15 percent lower than the pressure outside the storm. This photograph, taken by the German astronaut Alexander Gerst from the International Space Station in September 2018, shows the well-defined eye of Hurricane Florence in the Atlantic Ocean.

Photograph credit: Alexander Gerst

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