area of low pressure developed off Atlantic Canada on October 28 and moved westward toward New England. It absorbed Hurricane Grace to its south and intensified significantly. The center remained offshore, although the high waves caused over $200 million in damage (1991 USD) and 13 deaths. More than 38,000 people were left without power, and along the coast high waves inundated roads and buildings. In portions of New England, damage was worse than Hurricane Bob had caused two months prior. Aside from tidal flooding along rivers, the storm's effects were primarily concentrated along the coast. In the middle of the storm, the Andrea Gail sank, killing its crew of six and inspiring a book and later a movie. It later received the name "the Perfect Storm" after a conversation between Boston National Weather Service forecaster Robert Case and author Sebastian Junger. After moving over the Gulf Stream, the system evolved into a small hurricane that dissipated after striking Nova Scotia. (more...
extinct relative of the alligator that lived 80 to 73 million years ago, during the Late Cretaceousperiod. The name is derived from the Greekδεινός/deinos ("terrible") and σουχος/soukhos ("crocodile"). Although Deinosuchus was far larger than any modern crocodile or alligator—measuring up to 12 m (40 ft) and weighing up to 8.5 metric tons (9.4 short tons)—its overall appearance was fairly similar to its smaller relatives. It had large, robust teeth that were built for crushing, and its back was covered with thick semispherical osteoderms. One study indicates that Deinosuchus may have lived for up to 50 years, growing at a similar rate to that of modern crocodilians, but maintaining this growth over a much longer period of time. Deinosuchus fossils have been found in ten U.S. states, as well as northern Mexico. It lived on both sides of the Western Interior Seaway, and was an opportunistic apex predator in the coastal regions of eastern North America. Deinosuchus reached its largest size in its western habitat, but the eastern populations were far more abundant. Deinosuchus was probably capable of killing and eating large dinosaurs. It may have also fed upon sea turtles, fish, and other aquatic and terrestrial prey. (more...
Gulf Coast, which meant that the troops stationed at San Antonio de Béxar could receive reinforcements and supplies only overland. Historian Bill Groneman believes that this contributed to the eventual Mexican defeat at the siege of Béxar, which expelled all Mexican troops from Texas. (more...
Successive Merina sovereigns continued to rule from the Rova until the fall of the monarchy in 1896. The largest palace within the complex, called Manjakamiadana, was built from 1839 to 1841 for Queen Ranavalona I. A fire on the night of 6 November 1995 destroyed or damaged all the structures within the Rova complex shortly before it was due to be inscribed on the list of UNESCOWorld Heritage Sites. Reconstruction of the Manjakamiadana exterior is scheduled for completion in 2011. (more...
confederation led by Shawnee brothers Tenskwatawa(pictured) and Tecumseh. While Tecumseh was away recruiting allies, Harrison marched with about 1,000 men to disperse the confederation's headquarters at Prophetstown, near the confluence of the Tippecanoe and Wabash Rivers in what is now the U.S. state of Indiana. The outnumbered warriors from Prophetstown launched a surprise attack, but Harrison's army prevailed. Public opinion in the United States blamed the conflict on British interference, a suspicion that served as a catalyst to the War of 1812. When the U.S. declared war on Great Britain in June 1812, Tecumseh's confederacy, now allied with the British, initiated its own war against the United States. (more...
Wilhelm II of Germany, was poor. Edward presciently suspected that Wilhelm would precipitate a war, and four years after Edward's death, World War I brought an end to the Edwardian way of life. (more...
The SS Edmund Fitzgerald was a 729-foot (222 m) Great Lakes freighter that made headlines after sinking in Lake Superior in a massive storm on November 10, 1975, with near hurricane-force winds and 35-foot (11 m) waves. The Fitzgerald suddenly sank approximately 17 miles (27 km) from the entrance to Whitefish Bay, at a depth of 530 feet (160 m). Her crew of 29 perished without sending any distress signals, and no bodies were recovered; she is the largest boat to have sunk in the Great Lakes. The Fitzgerald carried taconite from mines near Duluth, Minnesota, to iron works in Detroit, Toledo and other ports. Many theories, books, studies and expeditions have examined the cause of the sinking. Her sinking is one of the most well-known disasters in the history of Great Lakes shipping and is the subject of Gordon Lightfoot's 1976 hit song, "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald". (more...)
Robert Heinlein. After Pohl entered the army in early 1943, wartime paper shortages led Popular to cease publication of Astonishing Stories. The final issue was dated April of that year. The magazine was never regarded as one of the leading titles of the genre, but despite the low budget it published some well-received material. Science fiction critic Peter Nicholls commented that "its stories were surprisingly good considering how little was paid for them", and this view has been echoed by other historians of the field. (more...
Jewish Autonomous Region near the Chinese border. Koval was recruited by the GRU, trained, and assigned the code name DELMAR. He returned to the United States in 1940 and was drafted into the US Army in early 1943. Koval worked at atomic research laboratories and, according to the Russian government, relayed back to the Soviet Union information about the production processes and volumes of the polonium, plutonium, and uranium used in American atomic weaponry, in addition to descriptions of the weapon production sites. After the war, Koval left on a European vacation but never returned to the United States. In 2007 Russian President Vladimir Putin posthumously awarded Koval the Hero of the Russian Federation decoration for "his courage and heroism while carrying out special missions". (more...
a fellowship. They embark on a quest to destroy the One Ring made by the Dark Lord Sauron, and ensure his destruction. The film features the voices of William Squire, John Hurt, Michael Graham Cox and Anthony Daniels of Star Wars fame. The screenplay was written by Peter S. Beagle, based on an earlier draft by Chris Conkling. Director Ralph Bakshi encountered Tolkien's writing early in his career, and had made several attempts to produce The Lord of the Rings as an animated film before being given funding by producer Saul Zaentz and distributor United Artists. Although the film was a financial success, it received a mixed reaction from critics, and the original distributors refused to fund a sequel to cover the remainder of the story. However, the film sparked new interest in Tolkien's writing, inspiring the production of several further adaptations of the story. (more...
canons of his cathedral chapter with monks, and began the construction of Durham Cathedral. In addition to his ecclesiastical duties, he served as a commissioner for the Domesday Book. He was also a councillor and advisor to both King William I and his son, King William II, known as William Rufus. Following William Rufus' accession to the throne in 1087, St-Calais was considered by scholars to be the new king's chief advisor. However, when the king's uncle, Odo of Bayeux, raised a rebellion against the king in 1088, St-Calais was implicated in the revolt. Imprisoned briefly, St-Calais was allowed to go into exile in Normandy, where he became a leading advisor to Robert Curthose, Duke of Normandy. By 1091, St-Calais had returned to England and regained royal favour. In England, St-Calais once more became a leading advisor to the king. In 1093 he negotiated with Anselm, Abbot of Bec, concerning Anselm's becoming Archbishop of Canterbury; in 1095 it was St-Calais who prosecuted the royal case against Anselm after he had become archbishop. Before his death in 1096, he had made his peace with Anselm, who blessed and consoled St-Calais on his deathbed. (more...
Hansa Studios in October 1990, but the sessions were fraught with conflict, as the band argued over the direction and quality of their music. After nearly breaking up, they made a breakthrough with the improvisation of the song "One". Morale improved during the subsequent recording sessions in Dublin in 1991. Achtung Baby received favourable reviews and went to number one in several countries. It spawned five hit singles, including "One", "Mysterious Ways", and "The Fly". The album has sold 18 million copies, and in 1993, it won the Grammy Award for Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal. The record and the multimedia-intensive Zoo TV Tour were central to U2's 1990s reinvention. Achtung Baby has regularly appeared on critics' lists of the greatest albums of all time. (more...
freeway in Michigan that serves portions of southern Kent and eastern Ottawa counties south of Grand Rapids. Initially opened to traffic on November 20, 2001, the roadway connects Interstate 196 on the west with Interstate 96 on the east while running through several townships on the south side of the Grand Rapids metropolitan area. Each end is in a rural area while the central section has suburban development along the highway. The freeway was originally conceived in the 1960s, and it took 32 years to approve, plan, finance, and build M-6 from the time that the state first authorized funding in 1972 to the time the full highway opened to traffic in 2004. Initial construction started in November 1997, with the first phase opened in 2001 and the remainder in November 2004. The project was built with two firsts: the first single-point urban interchange in the state, and a new technique to apply the pavement markings, embedding them into the concrete to reduce the chance of a snowplow scraping them off. (more...
Valemount in eastern British Columbia, Canada, when a westbound troop train and the eastbound Canadian National Railway (CNR) Continental Limited collided head-on. Twenty-one people were killed: seventeen Canadian soldiers being deployed in the Korean War (memorial to them pictured) and the two-man locomotive crew of each train. The post-crash investigation found that the order given to the troop train differed from the intended message. Crucial words were missing, causing the troop train to proceed on its way rather than halt on a siding, which caused the collision. A telegraph operator, Alfred John "Jack" Atherton, was charged with manslaughter; the prosecution alleged he was negligent in passing an incomplete message. His family hired his Member of Parliament, John Diefenbaker, as defence counsel. Diefenbaker joined the British Columbia bar to take the case, and obtained Atherton's acquittal. (more...
Edward Teach (c. 1680 – 1718), better known as Blackbeard, was a notorious English pirate who operated around the West Indies and the eastern coast of the American colonies. He was probably born in Bristol, but little is known about his early life. He may have served on privateer ships during Queen Anne's War before he joined the crew of Benjamin Hornigold, a pirate who operated from the Caribbean island of New Providence, and with whom he engaged in numerous acts of piracy. Teach renamed a captured merchant vessel as Queen Anne's Revenge and became a renowned pirate, his nickname derived from his thick black beard and fearsome appearance; he was reported to have tied lit fuses under his hat to frighten his enemies. A shrewd and calculating leader, he avoided the use of force, relying instead on his fearsome image, and commanding his vessels with the permission of their crews. There are no known accounts of his ever having harmed or murdered those he held captive. Following his death on 22 November 1718, his image was romanticised, becoming the inspiration for a number of pirate-themed works of fiction across a range of genres. (more...)
travel writings, so that his reputation was built in part because of his character. Critics, including his sister in her novel Ruth Hall, occasionally described him as being effeminate and Europeanized. Despite his intense popularity for a time, at his death Willis was nearly forgotten. (more...
cover-point (now known as a defenceman) who played nine seasons for several teams in different leagues. He also played briefly for the Ottawa Rough Ridersfootball team. With his brother Bruce, Stuart played in the first professional ice hockey league, the American-based International Professional Hockey League (IPHL), and was highly regarded. Frustrated with the violence associated with the IPHL, he left the league late in 1906 and returned to Canada, where in 1907 he helped the Montreal Wanderers win the Stanley Cup, the championship trophy for hockey. Two months later, he died in a diving accident. To raise money for his widow and children, the Eastern Canada Amateur Hockey Association hosted an all-star game, the first of its kind to be played in any sport. Stuart became known for his ability to score goals while playing a defensive role and for remaining calm during matches that often turned violent. His efforts were acknowledged in 1945, when he became one of the first twelve players to be inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame. (more...
transposons as well as gene expression in general. The RNAi pathway is found in many eukaryotes and is initiated by the enzyme Dicer(pictured), which cleaves long double-stranded RNA (dsRNA) molecules into short fragments of ~20 nucleotides that are called siRNAs. Each siRNA is unwound into two single-stranded (ss) ssRNAs, namely the passenger strand and the guide strand. The passenger strand is degraded, and the guide strand is incorporated into the RNA-induced silencing complex (RISC). The selective and robust effect of RNAi on gene expression makes it a valuable research tool, both in cell culture and in living organisms because synthetic dsRNA introduced into cells can induce suppression of specific genes of interest. (more...
Nintendo GameCube in Japan on December 13, 2002, and released in North America, Europe, and Australia over the following five months. The player controls Link, the protagonist of the Zelda series, as he struggles against his nemesis, Ganondorf, for control of a sacred relic known as the Triforce. Link spends a large portion of the game sailing, traveling between islands, and traversing through dungeons and temples to gain the power necessary to defeat Ganondorf. A heavy emphasis is placed on using and controlling wind with a baton called the Wind Waker, which aids sailing and floating in air. The Wind Waker follows in the footsteps of two of its predecessors, Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask, retaining the basic gameplay and control system from the two Nintendo 64 titles. Though controversial during development for its use of cel shading graphics and the younger Link character, The Wind Waker was still one of the Nintendo GameCube's most successful games. (more...
Montague Druitt (1857–1888) was a suspect in the Jack the Ripper murders that took place in London between August and November 1888. He came from an upper-middle class English background, and studied at Winchester College and the University of Oxford. After graduating, he took a position at a boarding school and pursued a parallel career in the law; he qualified as a barrister in 1885. His main interest outside work was cricket, which he played with many leading players of the time, including Lord Harris and Francis Lacey. In November 1888, he lost his post at the school for reasons that remain unclear. One month later his body was found drowned in the River Thames. His death, which was found to be a suicide, roughly coincided with the end of the murders that were attributed to Jack the Ripper. Private suggestions in the 1890s that he could have committed the crimes became public knowledge in the 1960s, and led to the publication of books that proposed him as the murderer. The evidence against him was entirely circumstantial, and many writers from the 1970s onwards have rejected him as a likely suspect. (more...)
Bix Beiderbecke (1903–1931) was an American jazzcornetist, jazz pianist, and composer. He was one of the most influential jazz soloists of the 1920s. He helped to invent the jazz ballad style and hinted at what, in the 1950s, would become cool jazz. Beiderbecke taught himself to play cornet largely by ear, leading him to adopt a non-standard fingering that some critics have connected to his original sound. He first recorded with a Midwestern jazz ensemble The Wolverines in 1924, after which he played briefly for the Jean Goldkette Orchestra before joining Frankie Trumbauer for an extended gig at the Arcadia Ballroom in St. Louis, Missouri. Beiderbecke and Trumbauer both joined Goldkette in 1926. The band toured widely and famously played a set opposite Fletcher Henderson at the Roseland Ballroom in New York City in October 1926. The following year, Trumbauer and Beiderbecke left Detroit to join the best-known and most prestigious dance orchestra in the country: the New York-based Paul Whiteman Orchestra. Beiderbecke's most influential recordings date from his time with Goldkette and Whiteman, although they were generally recorded under his own name or Trumbauer's. Beiderbecke left the Whiteman band in 1930 and the following summer died in his Queens apartment at the age of twenty-eight. (more...)
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