120px|Tumbler Ridge Town Hall
Tumbler Ridge is a small town in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains in northeastern British Columbia, Canada, and a member municipality of the Peace River Regional District. The municipality, with its population of 2,454 people, incorporates a townsite and a large area of mostly Crown Land. The housing and municipal infrastructure were built simultaneously in 1981 by the provincial government to service the coal industry. In 1981, a consortium of Japanese steel mills agreed to purchase 100 million tonnes of coal from two mining companies that were to operate the Quintette mine and the Bullmoose mine. Declining global coal prices after 1981, and weakening Asian markets in the late 1990s, made the town's future uncertain. When price reductions were forced onto the mines, the Quintette mine was closed in 2000 and the town lost about half its population. Since 2000 rising coal prices have led to the opening of new mines. After dinosaur footprints, fossils, and bones were discovered in the municipality, the Peace Region Paleontology Research Centre opened in 2003. Economic diversification has also occurred with oil and gas exploration, forestry, and recreational tourism. Nearby recreational destinations include numerous trails, mountains, waterfalls, snowmobiling areas and provincial parks. (more...)
Recently featured: Harry Cobby – SS Edmund Fitzgerald – Edward VII
Archive – By email – More featured articles...
Read the rest of this article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tumbler_Ridge%2C_British_Columbia
_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:
1028:
Future Byzantine empress Zoe first took the throne as empress consort to Romanos III Argyros. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoe_Porphyrogenita
1893:
Mortimer Durand, Foreign Secretary of British India, and Abdur Rahman Khan, Amir of Afghanistan, signed the Durand Line Agreement, establishing what is now the international border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Durand_Line
1936:
The San Francisco – Oakland Bay Bridge, connecting San Francisco and Oakland, California across San Francisco Bay, opened to traffic. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_%E2%80%93_Oakland_Bay_Bridge
1942:
World War II: The Naval Battle of Guadalcanal , the decisive engagement in a series of naval battles between Allied and Japanese forces during the months-long Guadalcanal campaign in the Solomon Islands, began. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naval_Battle_of_Guadalcanal
1991:
In Dili, East Timor, Indonesian forces opened fire on student demonstrators protesting the occupation of East Timor, killing at least 250 people. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Cruz_massacre
_____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day:
eclaircissement (n): An explanation of something obscure or unknown; clarification, enlightenment http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/eclaircissement
___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day:
If the learned and worldly-wise men of this age were to allow mankind to inhale the fragrance of fellowship and love, every understanding heart would apprehend the meaning of true liberty, and discover the secret of undisturbed peace and absolute composure. --Bahá'u'lláh http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Bah%C3%A1%27u%27ll%C3%A1h