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American philosopher of science Thomas Kuhn dies

Thomas Kuhn was an American physicist, historian and philosopher of science whose controversial 1962 book “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions” was influential in both academic and popular circles. He claimed scientific fields undergo periodic "paradigm shifts" rather than progressing in a solely linear and continuous way, that the notion of scientific truth cannot be established solely by objective criteria but is defined by a consensus of a scientific community, and that competing paradigms are frequently incommensurable; that is, they are competing and irreconcilable accounts of reality.

Space Shuttle Discovery is launched

STS-51-G was the eighteenth flight of NASA's Space Shuttle program, and the fifth flight of Space Shuttle Discovery. The seven-day mission launched from Kennedy Space Center, Florida, and landed at Edwards Air Force Base, California. Sultan Salman Al Saud of Saudi Arabia was on board as a payload specialist; Al Saud became the first Arab, the first Muslim, and the first member of a royal family to fly into space.

China tests its first hydrogen bomb

Test No. 6 is the codename for China's first test of a three-staged thermonuclear device and also its sixth nuclear weapons test. The device was detonated at Lop Nur Test Base, often called Lop Nur Nuclear Weapon Test Base, in Malan, Xinjiang in 1967.

Francis Drake lands on the California coast

Sir Francis Drake was an English sea captain, privateer, slave trader, naval officer and explorer of the Elizabethan era. During a round-the-world voyage, he landed on the California coastline in a place now called Drakes Bay, though Drake himself named the newly discovered land New Albion. After making landfall, he continued on his journey circumnavigating the globe, returning home to England in 1580.

Anniversaries of the (in)famous