In Iowa, Interstate 80 (I-80) enters at the Missouri River in Council
Bluffs, extends east through the southern Iowa drift plain, passes
around Des Moines and through Iowa City, and crosses into Illinois at
the Mississippi River near Le Claire. I-80 is an American
transcontinental Interstate Highway stretching from San Francisco,
California, to Teaneck, New Jersey. Before the Interstate was built, US
Route 6 was the busiest highway in Iowa. In the early 1950s, a turnpike
along the US 6 corridor was slated to be the first modern four-lane
highway in the state, but those plans were shelved when the Interstate
Highway System was created in 1956. The first section of I-80 opened in
1958 in the western suburbs of Des Moines, and new sections of the
Interstate opened up regularly over the next twelve years. The final
segment in Iowa, the Missouri River bridge to Omaha, Nebraska, opened in
1972. About one-third of Iowa's population lives along the I-80
corridor, most of which runs through farmland.
Read more: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_80_in_Iowa>
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Today's selected anniversaries:
905:
Louis III, Holy Roman Emperor, was captured during his attempt
to restore Carolingian power over Italy by King Berengar I and blinded.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_the_Blind>
1925:
American high school biology teacher John T. Scopes was found
guilty (trial pictured) of violating Tennessee's Butler Act by teaching
evolution in class.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scopes_Trial>
1973:
Mossad agents mistakenly assassinated a Moroccan waiter in
Lillehammer, Norway, whom they believed had been involved in the 1972
Munich Olympics massacre.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lillehammer_affair>
2012:
Turkish adventurer Erden Eruç became the first person in
history to complete a solo human-powered circumnavigation of the Earth.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erden_Eru%C3%A7>
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Wiktionary's word of the day:
bluff out:
(transitive) To deceive (someone) in order to convince them to give up.
<https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/bluff_out>
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Wikiquote quote of the day:
It's the people and the cause that matter and right now there's
an important need, which is bridge-building. I wanted to support the
cause of humanity, because that's what I always sang about. Music can
be healing, and with my history and my knowledge of both sides of what
looks like a gigantic divide in the world, I feel I can point a way
forward to our common humanity again. It's a big step for me but it's a
natural step. I don't feel at all irked by the responsibility — I feel
inspired.
--Yusuf Islam (Cat Stevens)
<https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Cat_Stevens>