On this date in 1981, John Hinckley tried to assassinate Ronald Reagan within two months of his taking office.
Early this morning, at 5:20 am EDT, MESSENGER captured this historic image of Mercury. This image is the first ever obtained from a spacecraft in orbit about the Solar System’s innermost planet. Over the subsequent six hours, MESSENGER acquired an additional 363 images before downlinking some of the data to Earth.
If you only read one news article today, it should be this New Yorker piece about the murder of Guatemalan attorney Rodrigo Rosenberg.