The Pacific swift (Apus pacificus) is a bird that breeds in eastern
Asia. This swift is strongly migratory, spending the northern
hemisphere's winter in a wide range of habitats in Southeast Asia and
Australia. The general shape and blackish plumage recall its relative,
the common swift, from which it is distinguished by a white rump band
and heavily marked underparts. Its main call is a screech typical of its
family. It breeds in sheltered locations such as caves and rock
crevices, or under the eaves of houses. The nest is a half-cup of dry
grass and other fine material that is gathered in flight, cemented with
saliva and attached to a vertical surface. Two or three white eggs are
incubated for about seventeen days before hatching. Like all swifts, the
Pacific swift feeds exclusively on insects caught in flight. The species
has a large population that occurs as far afield as the US and New
Zealand, and rarely in Europe.
Read more: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_swift>
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Today's selected anniversaries:
1797:
The Riobamba earthquake, the most powerful in Ecuador's
history, devastated Riobamba and many other cities, causing at least
6,000 casualties.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1797_Riobamba_earthquake>
1945:
World War II: U.S. forces liberated the Santo Tomas Internment
Camp in Manila, the largest of the Japanese internment camps in the
Philippines.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santo_Tomas_Internment_Camp>
1974:
American newspaper heiress and socialite Patty Hearst was
kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army, which she later joined, in
one of the most well-known cases of Stockholm syndrome.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patty_Hearst>
2008:
The London low emission zone, governing what types of vehicles
may enter Greater London, came into operation.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_low_emission_zone>
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Wiktionary's word of the day:
cachexia:
(pathology) A systemic wasting of muscle tissue, with or without loss of
fat mass, that accompanies a chronic disease.
<https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/cachexia>
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Wikiquote quote of the day:
I recall standing on the edge of a deep valley in the Hawaiian
island of Maui, thinking that the life stream is like a mountain river
— springing from hidden sources, born out of the earth, touched by
stars, merging, blending, evolving in the shape momentarily seen. It is
molecules probing through time, found smooth-flowing, adjusted to shaped
and shaping banks, roiled by rocks and tree trunks — composed again.
Now it ends, apparently, at a lava brink, a precipitous fall. Near the
fall's brink, I saw death as death cannot be seen. I stared at the very
end of life, and at life that forms beyond, at the fact of immortality.
Dark water bent, broke, disintegrated, transformed to apparition — a
tall, stately ghost soul emerged from body, and the finite individuality
of the whole becomes the infinite individuality of particles. Mist
drifted, disappeared in air, a vanishing of spirit. Far below in the
valley, I saw another river, reincarnated from the first, its particles
reorganized to form a second body. It carried the same name. It was
similar in appearance. It also ended at a lava brink. Flow followed
fall, and fall followed flow as I descended the mountainside. The river
was mortal and immortal as life, as becoming.
--Charles Lindbergh
<https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Charles_Lindbergh>