Kōsuke Morita and Hiroshi Matsumoto

Nihonium is a synthetic chemical element with symbol Nh and atomic number 113. It is extremely radioactive; its most stable known isotope, nihonium-286, has a half-life of about 10 seconds. In the periodic table, nihonium is a transactinide element at the intersection of period 7 and group 13. Its creation was reported in 2003 by a Russian–American collaboration at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna, Russia, and in 2004 by a team of Japanese scientists at Riken in Wakō, Japan. The discoveries were confirmed by independent teams working in the United States, Germany, Sweden, and China. In 2016 the element was officially recognised and naming rights were assigned to Riken, as they were judged to have been first to observe it. The name, approved in the same year (announcement pictured), derives from a Japanese word for Japan, Nihon. Few details are known about nihonium, as it has only been formed in very small amounts that decay away within seconds. (Full article...)

A. tenuissima

• ... that the seeds of Acacia tenuissima (pictured) were used by Indigenous Australians to make damper?
• ... that "Love Interruption" was the first song American musician Jack White released after the breakup of rock duo The White Stripes?
• ... that according to Lea Hernandez, editor of webcomic subscription service Girlamatic, she originally wanted to call the website "ModernGirls" but the name was already taken by a porn site?
• ... that 17-year-old Dutch chess grandmaster Lucas van Foreest has a brother, great-great grandfather, and great-great granduncle who have all been Dutch Chess Champions?
• ... that the East Side Access railroad expansion in New York City has been estimated to cost about $3.5 billion per mile of new tunnel, seven times more than similar projects in other countries?
• ... that Herman Pines, who could not attend university in Poland because of Jewish quotas, worked on developing aviation fuels that helped the Royal Air Force win the Battle of Britain?
• ... that the first woman voted in as head of state says she would not have got her job if women in Iceland had not walked away from theirs?
• ... that Joan L. Mitchell co-invented JPEG?

Maithripala Sirisena

• The International Committee for Weights and Measures confirms new definitions for the units kilogram, ampere, kelvin and mole.
• Amidst a constitutional crisis, the Supreme Court of Sri Lanka suspends the attempt by President Maithripala Sirisena (pictured) to dissolve parliament.
• American comic book creator Stan Lee dies at the age of 95.
• An outbreak of Ebola in the Democratic Republic of the Congo has killed more than 200 people since August.

November 17

Queen Elizabeth I of England

• 1558 – Elizabeth I (pictured) became Queen of England and Ireland, marking the beginning of the Elizabethan era.
• 1796 – French Revolutionary Wars: French forces defeated the Austrians at the Battle of Arcole in a manoeuvre to cut the latter's line of retreat.
• 1968 – NBC controversially cut away from an American football game between the Oakland Raiders and New York Jets to broadcast Heidi, causing viewers in the Eastern United States to miss the game's dramatic ending.
• 2009 – Administrators at the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia discovered that their servers had been hacked and thousands of emails and files on climate change had been stolen.
• 2013 – Tatarstan Airlines Flight 363 crashed during an aborted landing at Kazan International Airport in Tatarstan, Russia, killing all 50 people on board and leading to the revocation of the airline's operating certificate.

Agnes of Jesus (b. 1602) · Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz (d. 1818) · Robert Hofstadter (d. 1990)