The 1998 NFC Championship Game was a National Football League game
played on January 17, 1999, to determine the National Football
Conference (NFC) champion for the 1998 NFL season. The visiting Atlanta
Falcons defeated the heavily favored Minnesota Vikings 30–27 in sudden
death overtime to win their first conference championship and advance to
the franchise's first Super Bowl appearance. The Vikings had gone
undefeated in their home stadium, the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome
(pictured), during the regular season, and their placekicker, Gary
Anderson, had become the first kicker in NFL history to convert every
field goal and extra point attempt in a season. At a critical moment
late in the game, Anderson missed a field goal that would have given the
Vikings a nearly insurmountable 10-point lead. Instead, the Falcons
scored a touchdown to tie the game on their ensuing drive, and in
overtime they won by a field goal. The Vikings became the first team
with an NFL regular season record of 15–1 that did not go on to win
the Super Bowl.
Read more: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1998_NFC_Championship_Game>
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Today's selected anniversaries:
960:
Emperor Taizu began his reign in China, initiating the Song
dynasty period that eventually lasted for more than three centuries.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Song_dynasty>
1899:
The Philippine–American War opened when an American soldier,
under orders to keep insurgents away from his unit's encampment, fired
upon a Filipino soldier in Manila.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Manila_(1899)>
1945:
World War II: U.S. Army forces liberated the Santo Tomas
Internment Camp in Manila, the largest of the Japanese internment camps
in the Philippines.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santo_Tomas_Internment_Camp>
1998:
A magnitude 5.9 MW earthquake struck northern Afghanistan,
triggering landslides that killed over 2,300 people and destroyed around
15,000 homes.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/February_1998_Afghanistan_earthquake>
2008:
The London low emission zone, governing what types of vehicles
may enter Greater London, came into being.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_low_emission_zone>
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Wiktionary's word of the day:
dabble:
1. (transitive) To make slightly wet or soiled by spattering or sprinkling
a liquid (such as water, mud, or paint) on it; to bedabble.
2. (transitive) To cause splashing by moving a body part like a bill or
limb in soft mud, water, etc., often playfully; to play in shallow
water; to paddle.
3. (intransitive) To participate or have an interest in an activity in a
casual or superficial way.
4. (intransitive, obsolete) To interfere or meddle in; to tamper with.
<https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/dabble>
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Wikiquote quote of the day:
The war might stop this winter, but that is improbable. It may go
on for fifty years or more. That also is improbable. The elements are
too conflicting and confused to form any accurate judgment of its
length. There may be a series of wars, one after another, going on
indefinitely. Possibly the world will come to its senses sooner than I
expect. But, as I have often said, the environment of human life has
changed more rapidly and more extensively in recent years than it has
ever changed before. When environment changes, there must be a
corresponding change in life. That change must be so great that it is
not likely to be completed in a decade or in a generation.
--Charles Lindbergh
<https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Charles_Lindbergh>