Today's featured article
|
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
|
Did you know...
|
From Wikipedia's newest articles:
- ... that Drake (pictured) had seven nominations at the 2010 MuchMusic Video Awards, the most of any artist?
- ... that development proposals for Washington, D.C.'s Kingman Island have included an airport, a landfill, a public aquarium, stadium parking lots, and a theme park?
- ... that medrogestone is a synthetic steroid with activity similar to the natural hormone progesterone, but unlike progesterone, is not transported by transcortin in the blood?
- ... that the 2009 Grammy-winning song "Rich Woman" was first released in 1955 by Li'l Millet and was written by himself and Dorothy LaBostrie?
- ... that the Opernhaus Dortmund was opened in 1966 with Der Rosenkavalier, performed in Dortmund first in 1911?
- ... that the American Petroleum Institute awarded George R. Brown a medal for the design of the first oil platform to be built out of sight of land?
- ... that the snail species Oxygyrus keraudrenii shows an evolutionary reduction of the gastropod shell for living in open sea?
- ... that the 8th century Sæbø sword has a runic inscription incorporating a swastika that has been interpreted as representing Thor?
- ... that George Malley, whose St. Ignatius High School football team was once compared to Notre Dame under Knute Rockne, resigned from the University of San Francisco with a losing record?
|
|
|
In the news
|
- 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.
|
On this day...
|
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
|
|