From today's featured articleFrank Borman (born 1928) is a retired United States Air Force colonel, aeronautical engineer, test pilot, and businessman, and the oldest living former NASA astronaut. In 1968, he was the commander of Apollo 8, the first crewed mission to fly around the Moon, for which he was awarded the Congressional Space Medal of Honor. A graduate of West Point, he served as an air force fighter pilot and flight instructor, and an assistant professor at West Point. He was one of five students in the first class at the Aerospace Research Pilot School, and was selected with the second group of NASA astronauts in 1962. He set a fourteen-day spaceflight endurance record as commander of Gemini 7, and served on the review board for the Apollo 1 fire. He became a senior vice president at Eastern Air Lines in 1970, and later its chief executive officer and chairman of the board, leading the company through its four most profitable years before resigning in 1986. He currently owns a ranch in Montana. (Full article...)
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Aida is a grand opera in four acts by Giuseppe Verdi to an Italian libretto by Antonio Ghislanzoni. Set in the Old Kingdom of Egypt, it was commissioned by Cairo's Khedivial Opera House and had its premiere there on 24 December 1871, in a performance conducted by Giovanni Bottesini. Today, the work holds a central place in the operatic canon, receiving performances every year around the world; at New York's Metropolitan Opera alone, Aida has been sung more than 1,100 times since 1886. This picture is the set design for Act 1, Scene 2, of the opera's 1871 premiere, depicting the portico of the Temple of Vulcan, designed by Philippe Chaperon. The drawing is in the collection of the Bibliothèque nationale de France. Drawing credit: Philippe Chaperon; restored by Adam Cuerden
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