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Explore major historical events from today or any day on Kudos 365.

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Main belt asteroid 52246 Donaldjohanson is about 8 kilometers long and 3.5 kilometers across. On April 20, this sharp close-up of the asteroid was captured at a distance of about 1100 kilometers by the Lucy spacecraft's long range camera during its second asteroid encounter. Named after American paleoanthropologist Donald Johanson, discoverer of the Lucy hominid fossil, the elongated asteroid was likely formed about 150 million years ago from a gentle collision of two smaller bodies creating its characteristic contact binary shape. Launched in October of 2021, the Lucy spacecraft will continue its travels through the main asteroid belt in 2025, but is on its way to explore Jupiter's swarm of Trojan asteroids. Lucy is expected to encounter its first Trojan asteroid target, 3548 Eurybates, in August 2027.

An image of Saint Mark from Grandes Heures d'Anne de Bretagne. Today is the Feast of Saint Mark.

Jean Bourdichon, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. View source.

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Beautiful emission nebula NGC 6164 was created by a rare, hot, luminous O-type star, some 40 times as massive as the Sun. Seen at the center of the cosmic cloud, the star is a mere 3 to 4 million years old. In another three to four million years the massive star will end its life in a supernova explosion. Spanning around 4 light-years, the nebula itself has a bipolar symmetry. That makes it similar in appearance to more common and familiar planetary nebulae - the gaseous shrouds surrounding dying sun-like stars. Also like many planetary nebulae, NGC 6164 has been found to have an extensive, faint halo, revealed in this deep image of the region. Expanding into the surrounding interstellar medium, the material in the halo is likely from an earlier active phase of the O star. This gorgeous telescopic view is a composite of extensive narrow-band image data, highlighting glowing atomic hydrogen gas in red and oxygen in greenish hues, with broad-band data for the surrounding starfield. Also known as the Dragon's Egg nebula, NGC 6164 is 4,200 light-years away in the right-angled southern constellation of Norma.

Photo by Daniel Stern

Bronze-winged jacana (Metopidius indicus) Vembanad Lake, Kerala, India.

Charles J. Sharp, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. View source.

Kara Kondo (1916 -2005) American, of Japanese ancestry (Nisei), born in Wapato, Yakima valley, Washington where she spent her childhood. Following the bombing of Pearl Harbor, at 27 years of age she was removed to the North Portland Assembly Center, Oregon, and then to the Heart Mountain concentration camp, Wyoming. Kondo was on the staff of the camp newspaper, the Heart Mountain Sentinel. Left camp for Chicago, Illinois, and lived in Pennsylvania, Kentucky and Missouri before returning to Yakima, Washington. Became involved in political organization postwar, such as the League of Women Voters. Testified before the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians during the redress movement, and became actively involved in groups addressing environmental issues.  Kara Kondo Interview - "The Day of Mass Removal" 

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

This surprising sky has almost everything. First, slanting down from the upper left and far in the distance is the central band of our Milky Way Galaxy. More modestly, slanting down from the upper right and high in Earth's atmosphere is a bright meteor. The dim band of light across the central diagonal is zodiacal light: sunlight reflected from dust in the inner Solar System. The green glow on the far right is aurora high in Earth's atmosphere. The bright zigzagging bright line near the bottom is just a light that was held by the scene-planning astrophotographer. This "almost everything" sky was captured over rocks on Castle Hill, New Zealand late last month. The featured finished frame is a combination of 10 exposures all taken with the same camera and from the same location. But what about the astrophotographer himself? He's pictured too -- can you find him? Jigsaw Fun: Astronomy Puzzle of the Day

Photo by Koen van Barneveld

Interrupted Reading by French artist Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot. Today is World Book Day.

Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. View source.

Hannah Arendt ( 1906 - 1975 ) German-American historian and philosopher. She was one of the most influential political theorists of the 20th century. Her works cover a broad range of topics, but she is best known for those dealing with the nature of power and evil, as well as politics, direct democracy, authority, and totalitarianism. She is commemorated by institutions and journals devoted to her thinking, the Hannah Arendt Prize for political thinking, and on stamps, street names, and schools, amongst other things. More