USS Marmora was a sternwheel steamer serving in the Union Navy from 1862 to 1865 in the American Civil War. Built in 1862 as a civilian vessel, she was bought for military service in September, and converted into a tinclad warship. Commissioned on October 21, she served on the Yazoo River and was on the Yazoo during the Battle of Chickasaw Bayou in December. She was assigned in 1863 to a fleet operating against Fort Hindman, but was absent when the fort surrendered on January 11. From February to April, she participated in the Yazoo Pass expedition, and in June burned two Arkansas settlements. In August, she saw action on the White River when the Little Rock campaign was beginning, and patrolled on the Mississippi River late that year. She fought in the Battle of Yazoo City on March 5. She was declared surplus in May 1865 and put in reserve status at Mound City, Illinois. She was decommissioned in July, and sold at auction on August 17, after which nothing is known.
Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Marmora_%281862%29
_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:
1789:
With the first use of his 1.2-metre (3.9 ft) telescope, then the largest in the world, William Herschel discovered a new moon of Saturn, later named Enceladus. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enceladus
1909:
The 1909 Monterrey hurricane dissipated; one of the deadliest Atlantic tropical cyclones on record, it killed an estimated 4,000 people throughout Mexico. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1909_Monterrey_hurricane
1963:
American civil-rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. delivered the speech "I Have a Dream" during the March on Washington, calling for civil and economic rights and an end to racism in the United States. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Have_a_Dream
1987:
Construction began on the Ryugyong Hotel in Pyongyang, the tallest building in North Korea. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryugyong_Hotel
_____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day:
contraction: 1. Senses relating to becoming involved with or entering into, especially entering into a contract. 2. 3. An act of incurring debt; also (generally), an act of acquiring something (generally negative). 4. (archaic) An act of entering into a contract or agreement; specifically, a contract of marriage; a contracting; also (obsolete), a betrothal. 5. (biology, medicine) The process of contracting or becoming infected with a disease. 6. Senses relating to pulling together or shortening. 7. A (sometimes reversible) contracting or reduction in length, scope, size, or volume; a narrowing, a shortening, a shrinking. 8. (archaic or obsolete) An abridgement or shortening of writing, etc.; an abstract, a summary; also (uncountable), brevity, conciseness. 9. (biology, medicine) A stage of wound healing during which the wound edges are gradually pulled together. 10. (biology, medicine) A shortening of a muscle during its use; specifically, a strong and often painful shortening of the uterine muscles prior to or during childbirth. 11. (economics) A period of economic decline or negative growth. 12. (linguistics) A process whereby one or more sounds of a free morpheme (a word) are reduced or lost, such that it becomes a bound morpheme (a clitic) that attaches phonologically to an adjacent word. 13. (linguistics, phonology, prosody) Synonym of syncope (“the elision or loss of a sound from the interior of a word, especially of a vowel sound with loss of a syllable”) 14. (orthography) In the English language: a shortened form of a word, often with omitted letters replaced by an apostrophe or a diacritical mark. 15. (by extension) A shorthand symbol indicating an omission for the purpose of brevity. 16. (obsolete, rare) An act of collecting or gathering. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/contraction
___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day:
The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges. But there is something that I must say to my people who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice. In the process of gaining our rightful place we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force. --Martin Luther King, Jr. https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Martin_Luther_King,_Jr.