NASA’s Stardust sample return capsule has returned to Earth today, floating to the ground under billowing parachute. A helicopter team has successfully located the capsule under desert dark conditions. —Leonard David —Mission Completed: Stardust Capsule Lands in Utah (Space)
The Missouri native fought briefly for the Confederacy but idolized U.S. Grant for preserving the Union (he eventually published the statesman‘sbest-selling memoirs); wrote in favor of rights for African Americans but was fond of telling racist jokes (and co-authored with Bret Harte the grotesquely anti-Chinese play Ah Sin); assailed the Gilded Age yet formed a…
At age ten, American students take an international test and score well above the international average. But by age fifteen, when students from forty countries are tested, the Americans place twenty-fifth. The longer kids stay in American schools, the worse they do in international competition. They do worse than kids from countries that spend much…