Upper and Lower Table Rock are two prominent volcanic plateaus just
north of the Rogue River in Jackson County, Oregon, US. Created by a
medium-grained lava flow around seven million years ago and shaped by
erosion, they now stand about 800 feet (240 m) above the surrounding
Rogue Valley. They are jointly owned by The Nature Conservancy and the
Bureau of Land Management. The Takelma tribe of Native Americans
inhabited the Table Rocks for at least 15,000 years before being forced
into reservations during a mid-19th-century gold rush. A post office was
established nearby in 1872, an airstrip was built atop Lower Table Rock
in 1948, and an aviation beacon was constructed on Upper Table Rock in
the 1960s. These plateaus, which were not protected until the 1970s, are
home to over 70 species of animals and 340 species of plants, including
the dwarf woolly meadowfoam. They are popular hiking locations in the
Rogue Valley, with over 45,000 visitors annually.
Read more: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upper_and_Lower_Table_Rock>
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Today's selected anniversaries:
1558:
Francis, Duke of Guise, retook Calais, England's last
continental possession, for France.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calais>
1610:
Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei made his first observation
of the four Galilean moons through his telescope: Ganymede, Callisto, Io
and Europa, although he was not able to distinguish the latter two until
the following day.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europa_(moon)>
1797:
The first official Italian tricolour was adopted by the
government of the Cispadane Republic.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Italy>
1948:
Air National Guard pilot Thomas Mantell fatally crashed his
P-51 Mustang while in pursuit of a UFO near Fort Knox, Kentucky.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mantell_UFO_incident>
1979:
The Vietnam People's Army captured Phnom Penh, deposing Pol Pot
and the Khmer Rouge, which marked the end of large-scale fighting in the
Cambodian–Vietnamese War.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambodian%E2%80%93Vietnamese_War>
2010:
In Nag Hammadi, Egypt, Muslim gunmen opened fire on a crowd of
Coptic Christians leaving church after celebrating a Christmas Mass,
killing eight of them as well as one Muslim bystander.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nag_Hammadi_massacre>
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Wiktionary's word of the day:
spade:
1. To turn over soil with a spade to loosen the ground for planting.
2. (videogaming) To collect and statistically analyze data, for the purpose
of determining the underlying random number generator structure or
numeric formula.
<https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/spade>
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Wikiquote quote of the day:
We now stand so aloof from nature that we think we are God. This
has always been a dangerous supposition.
--Gerald Durrell
<https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Gerald_Durrell>