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Konon Molody

ThePortland spy ring was anespionage group active in the United Kingdom between 1953 and 1961. It comprised five people who obtained classified research documents from theAdmiralty Underwater Weapons Establishment (AUWE) on theIsle of Portland, Dorset, and passed them to theSoviet Union. Two of the group,Harry Houghton andEthel Gee worked at the AUWE and had access to classified information. They passed this to theirhandler,Konon Molody(pictured), aKGB agentacting under a Canadian passport in the name Gordon Lonsdale. Lonsdale would pass the documents toLona andMorris Cohen, American communists living under the names Helen and Peter Kroger; they passed the information to Moscow. The ring was exposed in 1960 after a tip-off from the Polish spyMichael Goleniewski. The information he supplied was enough to identify Houghton.MI5 surveillance uncovered the rest of the group, who were arrested in January 1961 and tried that March. Sentences for the group ranged from 15 to 25 years. (Full article...)

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On this day

April 29

HMS Endeavour

1760 –Seven Years' War: France beganan unsuccessful attempt to retakeQuebec City, which had beencaptured by Britain.
1770 – Onhis first voyage, British explorerJames Cook and the crew ofHMS Endeavour(pictured) landed atBotany Bay, making the first recorded European landfall on the eastern coast of Australia.
1945 –World War II: The U.S. Army liberatedDachau, the firstNazi concentration camp, andkilled German prisoners of war.
1995 – Before a crowd of about 165,000 at theRungrado 1st of May Stadium,Ric Flair andAntonio Inoki competed in themain event ofCollision in Korea, thehighest attended professional wrestling event of all time.
2015 – The ringleaders of theBali Nine were executed in Indonesia for attempting to smuggle 8.3 kg (18 lb) ofheroin to Australia in 2005.

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Mount Whymper is a 2,845-metre-high (9,334 ft) mountain located in theCanadian Rockies in the Canadian province ofBritish Columbia. Located in theVermilion Pass inKootenay National Park, it is named afterEdward Whymper, who, along with four guides (Joseph Bossoney,Christian Kaufmann,Christian Klucker, and Joseph Pollinger), was the first to climb the mountain in 1910. Mount Whymper is composed ofsedimentary rock laid down during thePrecambrian toJurassic periods as part of theLaramide orogeny. This panoramic photograph shows the southeastern aspect of Mount Whymper, as seen from the Stanley Glacier Trail, with Stanley Valley in the foreground.

Photograph credit:The Cosmonaut

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