Melville Island is a small peninsula in Nova Scotia, Canada, located in the Northwest Arm of Halifax Harbour, west of Deadman's Island. It is part of the Halifax Regional Municipality. The land is rocky, with thin, acidic soil, but supports a limited woodland habitat. The site was discovered by Europeans in the 1600s, though it was likely earlier explored by aboriginals. It was initially used for storehouses before being purchased by the British, who built a prisoner-of-war camp to hold captives from the Napoleonic Wars and later the War of 1812. The burial ground for the prisoners was on the adjacent Deadman's Island. Melville Island was used as a receiving depot for slaves escaping the United States, then as a quarantine hospital for immigrants arriving from Europe (particularly Ireland). It briefly served as a recruitment centre for the British Foreign Legion during the Crimean War and was then sold to the British for use as a military prison. The land was granted to the Canadian government in 1907, which used it to detain German and Austro- Hungarian nationals during the First World War. During the Second World War, prisoners were sent to McNabs Island instead, and ammunition depots were kept on Melville Island. The peninsula now houses the clubhouse and marina of the Armdale Yacht Club. Melville Island has been the subject of a number of cultural works, most of which concern its use as a prison.
Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melville_Island_(Nova_Scotia)
_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:
1852:
The first Harvard–Yale Regatta—the first intercollegiate sports event in the United States—was held on Lake Winnipesaukee, New Hampshire. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvard%E2%80%93Yale_Regatta
1916:
Irish nationalist Sir Roger Casement was hanged at London's Pentonville Prison for treason for his role in the Easter Rising, a rebellion to win Irish independence from Britain. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Casement
1929:
Jiddu Krishnamurti, believed to likely be the messianic "World Teacher", shocked the Theosophy movement by dissolving the Order of the Star, the organisation established to support him. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_the_Star_in_the_East
1936:
African American athlete Jesse Owens won the first of his four gold medals at the Berlin Summer Olympics, dashing Nazi leaders' hopes of Aryan domination. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Owens
1948:
Before the House Un-American Activities Committee of the United States House of Representatives, former spy turned government informer Whittaker Chambers accused U.S. State Department official Alger Hiss of being a communist and a Soviet spy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alger_Hiss
2005:
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the former Mayor of Tehran, began his term as the sixth President of Iran. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahmoud_Ahmadinejad
_____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day:
bowdlerize: To remove those parts of a text considered offensive, vulgar, or otherwise unseemly. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/bowdlerize
___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day:
We came into a homeless frontier, a place where we were not welcome, where nothing that lived was welcome, where thought and logic were abhorrent and we were frightened, but we went into this place because the universe lay before us, and if we were to know ourselves, we must know the universe... --Clifford D. Simak https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Clifford_D._Simak