The Manchester Bolton & Bury Canal is a disused canal in Greater Manchester,
North West England, built to link Bolton and Bury with Manchester. The
canal, when fully opened, was 15 miles (24 km) and 1 furlong (200 m) long.
It was accessed via a junction with the River Irwell in Salford. Seventeen
locks were required to climb to the summit as it passed through Pendleton,
heading northwest to Prestolee before it split northwest to Bolton and
northeast to Bury. The canal was commissioned in 1791 by local landowners
and businessmen and built between 1791 and 1808, during the Golden Age of
canal building, at a cost of £127,700. Originally designed for narrow gauge
boats, the canal was altered during its construction into a broad gauge
canal to allow an ultimately unrealised connection with the Leeds and
Liverpool Canal. The majority of the freight carried was coal from local
collieries but, as the mines reached the end of their working lives,
sections of the canal fell into disuse and disrepair and it was officially
abandoned in 1961. In 1987, a society was formed with the aim of restoring
the canal for leisure use and, in 2006, restoration began in the area around
the junction with the River Irwell in Salford. The canal is currently
navigable as far as East Ordsall Lane, in Salford.
Read the rest of this article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manchester_Bolton_%26_Bury_Canal
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Today's selected anniversaries:
655:
Penda of Mercia was defeated by Oswiu of Northumbria at the Battle of the
Winwaed in what is modern-day Yorkshire.
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Winwaed)
1889:
A military coup led by Field Marshal Deodoro da Fonseca overthrew Emperor
Pedro II and declared Brazil a republic.
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deodoro_da_Fonseca)
1920:
The first general assembly of the League of Nations was held in Geneva,
Switzerland, with 42 founding members.
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/League_of_Nations)
1971:
Intel released the 4004 4-bit central processing unit, the world's first
commercially available microprocessor, capable of executing approximately
60,000 instructions per second.
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_4004)
1985:
Northern Ireland peace process: British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher,
and the Irish Taoiseach Garret FitzGerald signed the Anglo-Irish Agreement,
giving the Irish Government an advisory role in Northern Ireland's
government.
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Irish_Agreement)
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Wiktionary's word of the day:
panacea (n) 1. A remedy believed to cure all disease and prolong
life; a cure-all.
2. Something that will solve all problems.
(
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/panacea)
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Wikiquote quote of the day:
The reason that clichés become clichés is that they are the hammers and
screwdrivers in the toolbox of communication.
--Terry Pratchett
(
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Terry_Pratchett)