There are 24 named waterfalls in Ricketts Glen State Park along Kitchen
Creek as it flows in three steep, narrow valleys, or glens, in the U.S.
state of Pennsylvania. They range in height from 9 feet (2.7 m) to the
94-foot (29 m) Ganoga Falls (see video). The park is named for R. Bruce
Ricketts, a colonel in the American Civil War who owned over
80,000 acres (32,000 ha) in the area in the late 19th and early 20th
centuries and spared the old growth forests in the glens from
clearcutting. The park, which opened in 1944, is administered by the
state's Bureau of State Parks. Nearly all of the waterfalls are visible
from the Falls Trail built by Ricketts, which the state park rebuilt in
the 1940s and late 1990s. The trail has been called "the most
magnificent hike in the state" and one of "the top hikes in the East".
The waterfalls are on the section of Kitchen Creek that flows down the
Allegheny Front, a steep escarpment between the Allegheny Plateau to the
north and the Ridge-and-Valley Appalachians to the south. The waterfalls
are the result of increased flow in Kitchen Creek from glaciers
enlarging its drainage basin during the last Ice Age.
Read more: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterfalls_in_Ricketts_Glen_State_Park>
_______________________________
Today's selected anniversaries:
1783:
Iceland's Laki craters began an eight-month eruption,
triggering major famine and massive fluorine poisoning.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laki>
1887:
German-American statistician Herman Hollerith received a patent
for his punch card tabulator.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punched_card>
1949:
Nineteen Eighty-Four, a dystopian political novel by English
writer George Orwell about life under the fictional totalitarian
government of Oceania, was first published.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineteen_Eighty-Four>
1995:
Danish-Greenlandic programmer Rasmus Lerdorf released the first
version of the scripting language PHP, which is now used as the server-
side language on nearly 40% of all web sites.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PHP>
2009:
Two American journalists, having been arrested for illegal
entry into North Korea, were sentenced to 12 years hard labor before
being pardoned two months later.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_imprisonment_of_American_journalists_by_North_Korea>
_____________________________
Wiktionary's word of the day:
oneironaut:
A person who explores dream worlds, usually associated with lucid
dreaming.
<https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/oneironaut>
___________________________
Wikiquote quote of the day:
Human beings betray their worst failings when they marvel to
find that a world ruler is neither foolishly indolent, presumptuous, nor
cruel.
--Marguerite Yourcenar
<https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Marguerite_Yourcenar>