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Atomic Energy Science & Technology

Test No. 6

Test No. 6The People’s Republic of China conducts a nuclear weapons test under the nondescript code name Test No. 6, which is in fact China’s first thermonuclear (hydrogen) bomb test. Dropped by an aircraft, Test No. 6 has a yield of 3.3 megatons. For context, China had conducted its first nuclear test barely three years earlier.

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Doctor Who Television

Introducing the third Doctor

Jon PertweeThe BBC announces that popular radio comedian Jon Pertwee will become Doctor Who‘s new star. With his penchant for character voices and other gags, the show’s producers – who will also be departing after the new Doctor’s installation – expect that Pertwee, and the series, will continue in a light-hearted vein with an increasingly comedic element. Though Pertwee’s first four-part story as the Doctor will reflect this thinking, the actor will actually take the role of the Doctor in a far more dramatic direction.

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Music

Electric Light Orchestra: Secret Messages

ELOElectric Light Orchestra‘s ninth album, the science fiction/time travel concept album Secret Messages, is released, featuring the single “Rock ‘n’ Roll Is King”. Originally a double album (slated to include the legendary lost song “Beatles Forever“), Secret Messages is pared down to a single LP late in production, and the resulting orphan tracks become the source of most of the group’s unreleased songs for several box sets to come.

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Crewed Spaceflight Discovery Space Shuttle

STS-51G

DiscoverySpace Shuttle Discovery returns to orbit for a week-long flight including the deployment of three communications satellites. American, Mexican and Saudi Arabian satellites are launched via payload assist modules. Discovery crew consists of Commander Daniel Brandenstein, Pilot John Creighton, mission specialists Shannon Lucid, John Fabian and Steven Nagel, and payload specialists Patrick Baudry and Sultan Salman Al-Saud (the first Saudi Arabian national to fly in space).

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Books

Doctor Who: The New Adventures

Doctor WhoWith no new series in sight on TV, Virgin Publishing begins its long-awaited line of original print fiction with the first Doctor Who New Adventures novel, “Timewyrm: Genesys” by John Peel. The first book in a four-book cycle of linked stories, the novel picks up where the television series left off, featuring the seventh Doctor and Ace. Three further books are already in the works in the Timewyrm series, with other authors lining up for a chance to write later books in 1992 and beyond.

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Herschel Uncrewed Spaceflight

Herschel Observatory decommissioned

Herschel Space ObservatoryThe European Space Agency officially shuts down the Herschel Space Observatory, having exhausted the unmanned orbital telescope’s remaining fuel supply with a maneuver to push it safely out of Earth’s L2 LaGrange point, opening that part of space up for future missions. Herschel’s science observations had ended when its supply of helium coolant, required to keep its instruments super-cooled to detect distant objects at the far-infrared end of the spectrum, ran out in April. Its replacement, the Gaia Space Observatory, is already being prepared for launch by ESA later in 2013.