Today's featured article
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Hurricane Bob was a weak hurricane that affected the southeast United States in July 1985. The second tropical storm and first hurricane of the 1985 Atlantic hurricane season, the system developed from a tropical wave on July 21 in the eastern Gulf of Mexico. Bob began moving east, striking southwestern Florida as a weak tropical storm. The storm then turned to the north and quickly intensified to hurricane status on July 24. The next day, it made landfall near Beaufort, South Carolina, becoming one of a record-tying six hurricanes to hit the United States during a single season. Bob caused $20 million in damage and five indirect deaths. In Florida, the storm produced heavy rainfall, peaking at over 20 inches (500 mm) in Everglades City. In most areas, the rainfall was beneficial due to dry conditions that had persisted throughout the year. Damage was minimal in South Carolina, where the hurricane made its final landfall. In Virginia, the storm spawned three tornadoes, one of which destroyed two houses. (more...)
Recently featured: Baltimore Steam Packet Company – Allosaurus – Ethan Hawke
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Did you know...
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From Wikipedia's newest articles:
- ... that the Iron Age Witham Shield was originally decorated with the leather silhouette of a wild boar (pictured)?
- ... that Tadeusz Adamowski, a pioneer of ice hockey in interwar Poland, played the sport at Harvard, coached the Polish national team, and was imprisoned in a German Oflag during World War II?
- ... that St Briavels Castle, once the royal hunting lodge of King John of England, later became a notorious debtors' prison?
- ... that Wendy Barlow was inducted into the Greater Victoria Sports Hall of Fame, and that her father Bob Barlow played in 77 NHL games with the Minnesota North Stars?
- ... that the cruiser SMS Bremse was scuttled at Scapa Flow in 1919, but was salvaged a decade later by Ernest Cox?
- ... that radio host Siv Stubsveen starred in A Story About Love, a film on the Internet Movie Database's bottom 100 list?
- ... that the KunstHausWien, a private museum in Vienna, occupies the former building of the Thonet furniture factory, creator of the iconic bistro chair?
- ... that the Memphite Formula, a standardized greeting on ancient Egyptian letters, was used so frequently that papyrus intended for use as letters would be prepared with the greeting already written?
- ... that bandleader Joe Lutcher abandoned his secular music career because of his religious beliefs, and influenced rock and roll star Little Richard to do the same?
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In the news
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- Arrowheads excavated from Sibudu Cave in South Africa indicate the use of the bow and arrow up to 64,000 years ago.
- A series of bombings across thirteen cities in Iraq kills more than fifty people.
- Al-Shabaab militants storm a hotel, killing dozens of people, including parliamentarians, amid heavy fighting in Mogadishu, Somalia.
- A plane crash in Heilongjiang, north-east People's Republic of China, kills 42 people.
- Nine people, including the hostage-taker, are killed in a hostage crisis on board a bus (pictured) in Manila, Philippines.
- Thirty-three miners are found alive but trapped, three weeks after a mine collapse near Copiapó, Chile.
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On this day...
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August 28: Feast of Dormition/Feast of the Assumption (Julian calendar)
- 1850 – German composer Richard Wagner's romantic opera Lohengrin, containing the Bridal Chorus, was first performed under the direction of Hungarian composer Franz Liszt in Weimar, present-day Germany.
- 1901 – Silliman University in Dumaguete City, Negros Oriental, Philippines, became the first American private school to be founded in the country.
- 1914 – In the first naval battle of World War I, British ships defeated the German fleet in the Heligoland Bight area of the North Sea.
- 1955 – African-American teenager Emmett Till was murdered near Money, Mississippi, for flirting with a white woman, energizing the nascent American Civil Rights Movement.
- 1963 – During a large political rally in Washington, D.C., Martin Luther King, Jr. (pictured) delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, describing his desire for a future where blacks and whites would coexist harmoniously as equals.
More anniversaries: August 27 – August 28 – August 29
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