[Daily article] October 17: Tube Alloys

Tube Alloys was the code name of the United Kingdom's research-and-
development programme, with participation from Canada, to develop
nuclear weapons during the Second World War. A 1940 memorandum on the
possibility of a nuclear weapon led to the formation early in the war of
the MAUD Committee, chaired by George Thomson (pictured), which called
for an all-out development effort. Due to the high costs and the
potential threat from German bombers, Tube Alloys was subsumed into the
Manhattan Project by the Quebec Agreement. The British contribution to
the Manhattan Project was crucial, but the United States did not provide
complete details to the United Kingdom. The Soviet Union gained valuable
information through its atomic spies, who had infiltrated both the
British and American projects. After the war, the United States
terminated co-operation with the enactment of the Atomic Energy Act of
1946. This prompted the United Kingdom to relaunch its own project: High
Explosive Research.

Read more: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tube_Alloys>

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Today's selected anniversaries:

1860:

The Open Championship, the oldest of the four major
championships in men's golf, was first played at Prestwick Golf Club in
Prestwick, Scotland.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Open_Championship>

1964:

Australian prime minister Robert Menzies inaugurated the
artificial Lake Burley Griffin in the centre of the capital Canberra.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Burley_Griffin>

2000:

A fatal rail accident at Hatfield, Hertfordshire, led to the
introduction of widespread speed limit reductions throughout the British
rail network and eventually caused the collapse of the railway
management group Railtrack.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railtrack>

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Wiktionary's word of the day:

thwart:
1. (transitive) To cause to fail; to frustrate, to prevent.
2. (transitive, obsolete) To place (something) across (another thing);
to position crosswise.
3. (transitive, also figurative, obsolete) To hinder or obstruct by
placing (something) in the way of; to block, to impede, to oppose.
4. (transitive, intransitive, obsolete) To move (something) across or
counter to; to cross.
<https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/thwart>

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Wikiquote quote of the day:

  The possibility of victory must be there in tragedy. Where pathos
rules, where pathos is finally derived, a character has fought a battle
he could not possibly have won. The pathetic is achieved when the
protagonist is, by virtue of his witlessness, his insensitivity, or the
very air he gives off, incapable of grappling with a much superior
force. Pathos truly is the mode for the pessimist. But tragedy requires
a nicer balance between what is possible and what is impossible. And it
is curious, although edifying, that the plays we revere, century after
century, are the tragedies. In them, and in them alone, lies the belief
— optimistic, if you will, in the perfectibility of man.  
--Arthur Miller
<https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Arthur_Miller>

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