On November 1, 2015, Thompson died from non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (NHL), a form of cancer, at the age of 73 in Nashville, Tennessee.
John Glenn
John Herschel Glenn Jr. (July 18, 1921 – December 8, 2016) was a former astronaut and United States Senator. He is best known for being the first American to orbit the Earth as an astronaut for NASA. After his career as an astronaut, he went into politics and served as a Senator from his home state of Ohio from 1974-1999. In 1998, he made his second spaceflight at the age of 77 years. He is the oldest man ever in outer space. Following the death of senator Edward Brooke in January 2015, he was the oldest living former U.S. senator until his death in December 2016.
Glenn was born in Cambridge, Ohio, to John Glenn, Sr. and Teresa (née Sproat). He was raised in New Concord, Ohio. Glenn studied engineering at Muskingum College. He received his private pilot's license for physics course credit in 1941. He received a Bachelor of Science at Muskingum College.
Glenn joined the United States Navy in 1942 and became a pilot. He switched to the United States Marine Corps soon afterwards. He served as a pilot in World War II and flew missions over the Pacific Ocean.
Glenn stayed in the Marines after the war. In the Korean War, he shot down three enemy planes and flew in 63 combat missions. On July 16, 1957, then-Major Glenn set the transcontinental air speed record, flying a F8U-1 Crusader from NAS Los Alamitos to Floyd Bennett Field, Brooklyn, in 3 hours, 23 minutes, and 8.4 seconds.
Project Bullet, as the mission was called, provided both the first transcontinental flight to average supersonic speed, and the first continuous transcontinental panoramic photograph of the United States. Glenn was awarded his fifth Distinguished Flying Cross for the mission.
In 1958, Glenn joined Project Mercury. He was the oldest of the seven pilots selected. Although Alan Shepard and Gus Grissom flew in outer space before Glenn did, Glenn was the first American to orbit the earth, as neither of the previous two had made a full orbit. He flew a Mercury spacecraft called Friendship 7. His first words when reaching orbit were "Zero G and I feel fine." He retired from NASA and the military after his flight.
He went into business. He became an executive for Royal Crown Cola. Glenn was friends with Robert F. Kennedy. Kennedy, an Attorney General of the United States and US Senator, told Glenn he should run for office. He planned on running for Senate in 1964, but an accident at home made him decide not to. In 1974, he ran for Senate as a Democrat. He defeated Senator Howard Metzenbaum in the primary. Glenn later beat Ralph J. Perk in the general election. He was reelected to the Senate in 1980. In 1984, he ran for President but the Democratic nomination went to Walter Mondale. Glenn was a popular senator and was re-elected several more times.
In 1998, Glenn flew on the . He is the oldest person to fly in space and the only sitting US Senator to fly in space. He retired from the Senate in 1999. He helped set up the John Glenn School of Public affairs at Ohio State University. President Barack Obama gave him the Medal of Freedom in 2012.
On April 6, 1943, Glenn married his childhood sweetheart, Anna Margaret Castor. They had met in New Concord and played together in the school band. They were the parents of two children. Glenn lived in Columbus, Ohio with his wife.
On December 8, 2016, Glenn died at a medical center after suffering from a "serious medical condition" in Columbus. He was 95 years old.
His body was buried at Arlington National Cemetery on April 6, 2017.
Super OS
Super OS (formerly: Super Ubuntu) is a free Linux distribution. It is a modified version of Ubuntu made with reconstructor. Its main goal is to provide an ‘Out of the Box’ experience, containing various enhancements over Ubuntu. It has the goal of remaining compatible with Ubuntu.
"App Runner" is a script included in "Super OS" that allows any kind of executable or script to be launched without having to use the command line. App Runner was also subject of an article by Lifehacker, saying ""App Runner would come in handy"" and ""there's plenty of scripts and closed-source apps that this would be useful for"".
There is also a Windows tool called "cd2usb" to create Ubuntu and "Super OS" Live USBs. The program is already included in the DVD of "Super OS".
The "RUNZ Framework" is a tool that allows the use of portable apps and something called "SuperDebs" (an installer with a .deb file + its dependencies that can be installed offline) in "Super OS". It is already included in "Super OS 9.04 SP 0.1+"
In addition to the official Ubuntu repositories, Super OS also includes its own repositories, which include third-party software like Adobe Reader, Skype, Real Player, TrueCrypt, PeaZip, Google Chrome or Ubuntu calendar, but also include tools/software developed by "hacktolive", like App Runner and RUNZ.
"Super OS" has been received mainly with positive reviews, with softpedia saying ""it is a distribution with super powers […] [due to] the inclusion of applications, tools and technologies that are missing from a standard Ubuntu"". "Super OS" (still with the name "Super Ubuntu" at the time), was also Lifehacker's "featured download" saying ""It's basically just a re-compiled version of the official Ubuntu distribution, but with a whole bunch of features included that save you the time of grabbing them yourself""."Super OS" is also the OS that the Helios project (a non-profit organization to give away computers to children without the money to buy them) pre-loads on most of the computers they give away. , Super OS is in the top 100 of the page hit ranking of DistroWatch.
Sahelanthropus
Sahelanthropus tchadensis is a fossil hominid. From evidence at the fossil site in Chad in the African Sahel, it is thought to have lived about 7 million years ago.
The split of the line into humans and chimpanzees (known as "human-chimpanzee divergence") probably happened between 6.3 and 5.4 million years ago. This can be seen from genetic data. Because the fossil is older than this spilt, its status is unclear. The first fossil found is known as "Toumaï" today.
Some fossils, a cranium (skull), five pieces of jaw, and some teeth, make up a head that has features that are like both modern and primitive humans. The braincase is only 340 cm³ to 360 cm³ in volume, about the same as chimpanzees. It is much less than the human volume of about 1350 cm³.
The teeth and structure of the face are very different from Homo sapiens. The cranium found is damaged, it is very distorted, so no 3D computer reconstruction has been made. There are no bones other than parts of the skull. It is unknown if "Sahelanthropus tchadensis" was bipedal (walked on two legs). The placement of the foramen magnum suggests they were, though. Its canine wear is similar to other Miocene apes.
"Sahelanthropus" may be an ancestor of both humans and chimpanzees; no consensus has been reached yet by the scientific community. The difficulty is caused by its "mosaic of primitive and derived features". Probably it lived in semi-open woodland and savannah, rather than the rainforest of present-day apes.
Another possibility is that Toumaï is related to both humans and chimpanzees, but is the ancestor of neither. Brigitte Senut and Martin Pickford, the discoverers of "Orrorin tugenensis", suggested that the features of "S. tchadensis" are consistent with a female proto-gorilla. Even if this claim is upheld, the find would still be significant, for at present few chimpanzee or gorilla ancestors have been found anywhere in Africa. Thus, if "S. tchadensis" is an ancestral relative of the chimpanzees (or gorillas), it represents the first known member of "their" lineage.