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From today's featured article

Barbarossa Cave, an inspiration for the game

The Longing is a 2020 point-and-click adventure game by independent game developer Studio Seufz. The player controls the Shade, a creature tasked with watching over a sleeping king in an underground kingdom for 400 days. Developer Anselm Pyta conceived of The Longing after hearing the Kyffhäuser legend while visiting the Barbarossa Cave (pictured). Pyta sought to explore emotional themes in a narrative-driven story, and used time as a game mechanism. As the primary developer for most of the game's six-year production, he had to rely upon intuition to design the pacing due to playtesting difficulties. The Longing was released for Windows, macOS, and Linux on March 5, 2020, and for the Nintendo Switch on April 14, 2021. It gained praise for its soundtrack, visuals, and experimental nature, but the slow-paced gameplay divided critics. Released during the COVID-19 pandemic, it was compared by many to life under quarantine, and won the "Best Debut" award at the 2020 Deutscher Computerspielpreis. (Full article...)

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Did you know ...

Castner Range National Monument

... that to open for recreation, Castner Range National Monument (pictured) in El Paso's Franklin Mountains still needs to be cleaned of live munitions since closing as a weapons test site in 1966?
... that Thierry Coquand won a SIGPLAN award for his eponymous proof assistant Coq, which was used to find a formal proof of the four color theorem?
... that the Chinese-language forum 1Point3Acres created a COVID-19 tracker used by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention?
... that Mary Shadow, the first unmarried woman in the Tennessee House of Representatives, received fourteen marriage proposals after her election?
... that the poem "Ovid in the Third Reich" has been described as "a classic reaction" to the Eichmann trial, despite being published before the trial was held?
... that Airis Computer's 1991 laptop could be powered with ten C batteries as an alternative to a rechargeable pack?
... that Christian Keller worked as an academic before running SSV Jahn Regensburg?
... that Ned Beatty turned down the role of John Doe in the film Seven because the script was the "most evil thing" he had ever read?

In the news

Jon Rahm

The European Space Agency launches the Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer to study Ganymede, Europa and Callisto.
In the Myanmar civil war, the military junta's air force kills at least 130 civilians in Pazigyi.
In golf, Jon Rahm (pictured) wins the Masters Tournament.
Former U.S. president Donald Trump is arraigned on 34 charges of falsifying business records.
Finland joins NATO as its 31st member.

On this day

April 14: Vaisakhi (Sikhism, 2023); Tamil New Year and other New Year festivals in South and Southeast Asia (2023); Day of the Georgian Language (1978)

"Houston, we've had a problem"

43 BC – War of Mutina: Despite initial success, troops loyal to Mark Antony were defeated near the Via Aemilia in northern Italy by legions loyal to the Roman Senate.
1944 – The freighter Fort Stikine, carrying cotton bales, gold and ammunition, exploded in the harbour of Bombay, India, sinking surrounding ships and killing about 800 people.
1970 – After an oxygen tank aboard Apollo 13 exploded, causing the spacecraft to lose most of its oxygen and electrical power, astronaut Jack Swigert reported: "Houston, we've had a problem" (audio featured).
1983 – Let's Dance, David Bowie's best-selling album, was released.
1994 – Iraqi no-fly zones conflict: In a friendly-fire incident during Operation Provide Comfort, two U.S. Air Force aircraft mistakenly shot down two U.S. Army helicopters over northern Iraq, killing 26.

Anne Sullivan (b. 1866)
John Gielgud (b. 1904)
Yakov Dzhugashvili (d. 1943)

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From today's featured list

Map of Alexander's campaigns in Asia Minor and the Middle East

Alexander the Great founded numerous settlements on his military campaigns (map pictured), during which he created one of the largest empires in history. His settlements have been the subject of intense debate, as the accounts of historical scholars differ wildly and are often contradictory. Plutarch provides the maximum estimate of seventy cities in his Life of Alexander, but most texts attest to between ten and twenty foundations, which Alexander named after himself or his close companions. The accounts of Alexander's campaigns, primarily those of Arrian, Plutarch, Diodorus, Curtius Rufus, and Justin, help to provide evidence. The most important of the settlements he founded include Alexandria in Egypt, Boukephala and Nikaia on the Indus River, Alexandria Eschate in Central Asia, and Alexandria Ariana in modern Afghanistan. (Full list...)

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Today's featured picture

C/2022 E3 (ZTF) is a long-period comet from the Oort cloud that was discovered by the Zwicky Transient Facility in March 2022. The comet has a bright green glow around its nucleus, due to the effect of sunlight on diatomic carbon and cyanogen. Its comet nucleus is estimated to be about 1 kilometre (0.62 mi) in size, rotating every 8.5 to 8.7 hours. Its tails of dust and gas extended for millions of kilometres and, during January 2023, an anti-tail was also visible. The comet reached perihelion on 12 January 2023, at a distance of 1.11 AU (166 million km; 103 million mi), and its closest approach to Earth was on 1 February 2023, at a distance of 0.28 AU (42 million km; 26 million mi). The comet reached magnitude 5 during this approach, and was visible with the naked eye under moonless dark skies. This photograph of C/2022 E3 (ZTF), released by the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics, was taken on 27 January 2023.

Photograph credit: Alessandro Bianconi

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