The Olympic marmot (Marmota olympus) is a rodent in the squirrel family,
Sciuridae. It lives only in the U.S. state of Washington, at middle
elevations on the Olympic Peninsula. About the size of a domestic cat,
an adult weighs around 8 kg (18 lb) in summer. Its coat is brown all
over with small whiter areas for most of the year, although the color
changes with the season and with age. It has a wide head, small eyes and
ears, stubby legs, and a long, bushy tail. Its sharp, rounded claws aid
in digging burrows. It eats a variety of meadow flora, including the dry
grasses that it uses as bedding in burrows. Its main predator is the
coyote. Like its closest relatives, the hoary marmot and the Vancouver
Island marmot, it hibernates seven to eight months a year. It is not
endangered, and is protected by law in the Olympic National Park, which
contains most of its habitat. Olympic marmots are social animals; they
often engage in play fighting and use four different whistles to
communicate.
Read more: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olympic_marmot>
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Today's selected anniversaries:
1840:
Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha married Queen Victoria of
the United Kingdom at the Chapel Royal, becoming prince-consort.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert,_Prince_Consort>
1906:
The Royal Navy battleship HMS Dreadnought was launched,
representing such a marked advance in naval technology that her name
came to be associated with an entire generation of battleships.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Dreadnought_(1906)>
1939:
Spanish Civil War: The Nationalists concluded their conquest of
Catalonia and sealed the border with France.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catalonia_Offensive>
1964:
The Royal Australian Navy aircraft carrier HMAS Melbourne
collided with and sank the destroyer HMAS Voyager in Jervis Bay,
Australia, killing 82 of Voyager's personnel.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melbourne%E2%80%93Voyager_collision>
2009:
The first accidental hypervelocity collision between two intact
satellites in low Earth orbit took place when Iridium 33 and Kosmos-2251
collided and destroyed each other.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_satellite_collision>
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Wiktionary's word of the day:
interrobang:
The nonstandard punctuation mark ‽ (a combination of ? and !), which
may be used at the end of a sentence to express excitement or disbelief,
or to indicate that it is a rhetorical question.
<https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/interrobang>
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Wikiquote quote of the day:
I think that if the beast who sleeps in man could be held down by
threats — any kind of threat, whether of jail or of retribution after
death — then the highest emblem of humanity would be the lion tamer in
the circus with his whip, not the prophet who sacrificed himself. …
What has for centuries raised man above the beast is not the cudgel but
an inward music: the irresistible power of unarmed truth, the powerful
attraction of its example.
--Boris Pasternak
<https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Boris_Pasternak>