On June 1, 2003, the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft was slewed eastward to capture views of the inner moon, Phobos, shortly before it set over the afternoon limb. Phobos orbits Mars about 3 times a day at an average distance of 5,828 miles. About 0.006 times the size of Earth's Moon, Phobos is a potato-shaped object with dimensions approximately 17 by 14 by 11 miles. (AP Photos/NASA/JPL/Malin Space Science Systems)

"I can well imagine that there is a future for bacterial warfare. We have not quite perfected it yet, but experiments are being made. I hear that they are very promising. But the use of this weapon is limited. Its significance lies in wearing down the enemy before the war. Our real wars will in fact be fought before military operations begin. I can quite imagine that we might control Britain in this way. Or America."

"Do you believe, my Führer, that America will again interfere in European affairs?" asked the third of the company, the young leader of then Danzig S.A.

"Certainly we shall prevent it from trying again," was the reply. "There are new weapons which are effective in such cases. America is permanently on the brink of revolution. It will be a simple matter for me to produce unrest and revolts in the United States, so that these gentry will have their hands full with their own affairs. We have no use for them in Europe."

"You said that we should poison the enemy with bacteria even before the war starts. How can that be done in peacetime?"

"Through agents, harmless commercial travellers. That is the surest method—at the moment the only effective one," Hitler replied. "The results would not be immediate. It would take several weeks, if not longer, for an epidemic to appear. Perhaps we shall introduce bacteria at the height of the war, at the moment when the powers of resistance fo the enemy are beginning to fail."

The classless society of Marxists, Hitler contended, was madness. Order always meant class order. But the democratic notion of a class order based on the moneybag was equally mad. A genuine aristocracy was not born out of the accidental successful speculatons of bright businessmen [...]

"The part played by the bourgeoisie is finished—permanently, my party comrades," he said. "Do not be deceived by any galvanic currents that may for a moment cause their dead muscles to jerk again. But even these 'upper classes justified by history,' this paper aristocracy, these degenerate shoots of ancient noble families, have still one thing left, 'to die in beauty.' "

At dinner, there was soup, followed by a meat course, vegetables and a sweet. Hitler himself ate no meat, but he devoured astonishing portions of the sweet, and his personal cook, an old party member, prepared special vegetable dishes for him. But Hitler placed no vegetarian compulsion on his guests, nor did he refuse them alcohol in the shape of beer. There was a choice between beer and lemonade, and it was amusing to watch newcomers, especially enthusiastic party members, choosing lemonade, with a side-glance at the temperate Führer, in order to make a good impression.

Shortly after electrons were discovered it was thought atoms were like little solar systems, made up of a central, heavy part (called the nucleus) and electrons, which went around in "orbits," much like the planets do when they go around the sun. If you think that's the way atoms are, you're back in 1910.

Sheppard, Jack
Born December 1702, Stepney, Eng.
Died Nov. 16, 1724, London

Byname of John Sheppard, 18th-century English thief who managed four spectacular escapes from London prisons and became a favourite figure in verse, popular plays, romances, and burlesques.

His father having died when he was a child, Sheppard was brought up in a workhouse; he learned to read and write but fell into the company of thieves and prostitutes in Drury Lane and turned to a life of petty crime. On April 24, 1724, he was seized and committed to St. Giles Roundhouse, from which he soon escaped. More thefts were followed by another incarceration, in New Prison, from which he again escaped on May 25, ridding himself of irons, cutting through bars, descending one wall, and scaling another. Thefts, highway robberies, and burglaries continued until he was betrayed by London's master informer and crime lord, Jonathan Wild (q.v.), and captured on July 23. Tried and condemned to death, he again escaped from the jails at Old Bailey, aided by a file smuggled to him by his girlfriend Poll Maggot. He was seized a fourth time on September 10 and housed in solitary in the strongest part of Newgate Prison. Manacled to the floor he nevertheless broke his chains, climbed a chimney, forced several bolted doors, then returned to his cell to get a blanket for rope, returned to the upper levels, and descended a wall to freedom. The next days found him pilfering and burgling, followed by a drunken bout that led to his capture and return to prison. On November 16 his hanging at Tyburn was reportedly witnessed by 200,000 people.