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On this day
- 1597 – Imjin War: About twelve Korean ships commanded by Admiral Yi Sun-sin defeated a large Japanese invasion fleet of at least 300 at the Battle of Myeongnyang in the Myeongnyang Strait. against waves of Japanese attackers during the Battle of Shanghai.
- 2001 – U.S. President George W. Bush signed the USA PATRIOT Act into law, significantly expanding the authority of U.S. law enforcement agencies in fighting terrorism in the United States and abroad.
- 2002 – Approximately 40 Chechen rebels and 130 hostages died when Russian forces stormed a theater building in Moscow to end a four-day hostage siege.
In the news
- Severe flooding in Yemen caused by Deep Depression ARB 02 (pictured) kills 58 and displaces 20,000.
- A bomb attack in Zagreb, Croatia kills Ivo Pukanić, the owner of the newspaper Nacional.
- The Indian Space Research Organisation successfully launches Chandrayaan-1, an unmanned lunar exploration mission.
- Several additional amino acids are found in vials from the 1953 Miller–Urey experiment that probed the origin of life.
- The United Nations General Assembly elects Turkey, Austria, Japan, Uganda, and Mexico to two-year terms on the Security Council.
Did you know...?
- ... that AMiBA (pictured) is a radio telescope located on Mauna Loa in Hawaii that is being used to observe the Cosmic Microwave Background and the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect in clusters of galaxies?
- ...that although the official government death toll of the 1997 Ardabil earthquake was given as 965 deaths, rescue workers at the scene claimed it was as much as three times higher?
- ... that Tang Dynasty general Li Na was, at one point, reduced to tears when he was under siege by another general, Liu Qia?
- ... that four of the candidates for either Governor or Lt. Governor in the 2008 American Samoa gubernatorial elections have ancestral ties to the Manu'a Islands?
Today's featured picture
Lake Estancia was a prehistoric body of water in the Estancia Valley, in the center of the U.S. state of New Mexico. Mostly fed by creek and groundwater from the Manzano Mountains, the lake had diverse fauna, including cutthroat trout. It appears to have formed when a river system broke up. It reached a maximum water level (highstand) presumably during the Illinoian glaciation and subsequently fluctuated between a desiccated basin and fuller stages. Wind-driven erosion has excavated depressions in the former lakebed that are in part filled with playas (dry lake beds). The lake was one of several pluvial lakes in southwestern North America that developed during the late Pleistocene. Their formation has been variously attributed to decreased temperatures during the ice age and increased precipitation; a shutdown of the thermohaline circulation and the Laurentide Ice Sheet altered atmospheric circulation patterns and increased precipitation in the region. The lake has yielded a good paleoclimatic record. This map shows the shoreline of Lake Estancia at three different periods: early Estancia (1,939 m / 6,362 ft above sea level), late Estancia (1,897 m / 6,224 ft), and "Lake Willard" (1,870 m / 6,135 ft). Present-day populated places, county boundaries and roads are overlaid on the map for identification.
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