Lake Estancia was a former body of water in the Estancia Valley, in the center of the U.S. state of New Mexico. Mostly fed by creek and groundwater from the Manzano Mountains, the lake had diverse fauna, including cutthroat trout. It appears to have formed when a river system broke up. It reached a maximum water level (highstand) presumably during the Illinoian glaciation and subsequently fluctuated between a desiccated basin and fuller stages. Wind-driven erosion has excavated depressions in the former lakebed that are in part filled with playas (dry lake beds). The lake was one of several pluvial lakes in southwestern North America that developed during the late Pleistocene. Their formation has been variously attributed to decreased temperatures during the ice age and increased precipitation; a shutdown of the thermohaline circulation and the Laurentide Ice Sheet altered atmospheric circulation patterns and increased precipitation in the region. The lake has yielded a good paleoclimatic record.
Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Estancia
_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:
1810:
Journalist Mariano Moreno published Argentina's first newspaper, the Gazeta de Buenos-Ayres. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mariano_Moreno
1917:
First World War: The British Army detonated 19 ammonal mines under German lines, killing 10,000 in the deadliest non-nuclear man-made explosion in history. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Messines_%281917%29
1948:
Anti-Jewish riots broke out in the French protectorate in Morocco, during which 44 people were killed and 150 injured. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1948_Anti-Jewish_riots_in_Oujda_and_Jerada
1969:
The rock supergroup Blind Faith, featuring Eric Clapton, Steve Winwood and Ginger Baker, played their only UK show in London's Hyde Park in front of 100,000 fans. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_Faith
_____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day:
victual: 1. (archaic) Food fit for human (or occasionally animal) consumption. 2. (archaic, chiefly in the plural) Food supplies; provisions. 3. (specifically, obsolete) 4. Edible plants. 5. (Scotland) Grain of any kind. 6. (transitive, reflexive, chiefly military, nautical) To provide (military troops, a place, a ship, etc., or oneself) with a stock of victuals or food; to provision. 7. (intransitive, chiefly military, nautical) To lay in or procure food supplies. 8. (intransitive) To eat. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/victual
___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day:
Experience isn't interesting until it begins to repeat itself — in fact, till it does that, it hardly is experience. --Elizabeth Bowen https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Bowen