Forest Park is a municipal and public park in the Tualatin Mountains
west of downtown Portland, Oregon. Stretching for more than 8 miles
(13 km) on hillsides overlooking the Willamette River, it is one of the
largest urban forest reserves in the United States. The park, a major
component of a regional system of parks and trails, covers more than
5,100 acres (21 km2) of mostly second-growth forest with a few patches
of old growth. About 70 miles (110 km) of recreational trails,
including the Wildwood Trail segment of the city's 40 Mile Loop system,
crisscross the park. As early as the 1860s civic leaders sought to
create a natural preserve in the woods near Portland. Their efforts led
to the creation of a municipal park commission that in 1903 hired the
Olmsted Brothers landscape architectural firm to develop a plan for
Portland's parks. More than 112 bird species and 62 mammal species
frequent the park and its wide variety of trees and shade-loving
plants. Many small tributaries of the Willamette River flow northeast
through the woods to pipes or culverts under U.S. Route 30 at the edge
of the park. Threats to the park include overuse, urban traffic,
encroaching development, invasive plants, and lack of maintenance
money. Occasional serious crimes and more frequent minor crimes have
occurred in the park.
Read the rest of this article:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forest_Park_%28Portland%2C_Oregon%29>
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Today's selected anniversaries:
1667:
The Second Anglo-Dutch War between England and the United Provinces
ended with the signing of the Treaty of Breda in the Dutch city of
Breda.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Anglo-Dutch_War>
1703:
English writer Daniel Defoe was placed in a pillory for seditious libel
after publishing a pamphlet politically satirising the High Church
Tories.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Defoe>
1941:
The Holocaust: Under instructions from Adolf Hitler, Hermann Göring
orders SS General Reinhard Heydrich to settle "the final solution of
the Jewish question".
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_Solution>
1999:
NASA's Lunar Prospector was deliberately crashed into the Shoemaker
crater near the moon's south pole in an unsuccessful attempt to detect
the presence of water
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Prospector>
2006:
Following intestinal surgery, Fidel Castro provisionally transferred
the duties of the Cuban presidency to his brother Raúl.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006%E2%80%932008_Cuban_transfer_of_presidential_duties>
2007:
The Troubles: Operation Banner, the name for the British armed forces'
operation in Northern Ireland, ended after 38 years with a mlitary
stalemate and ceasefire.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Banner>
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Wiktionary's word of the day:
zilch (n):
Nothing; zero
<http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/zilch>
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Wikiquote quote of the day:
The future of humanity is uncertain, even in the most prosperous
countries, and the quality of life deteriorates; and yet I believe that
what is being discovered about the infinitely large and infinitely
small is sufficient to absolve this end of the century and millennium.
What a very few are acquiring in knowledge of the physical world will
perhaps cause this period not to be judged as a pure return of
barbarism.
--Primo Levi
<http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Primo_Levi>