M-6 is a 19.7-mile (31.7 km) freeway that serves portions of southern Kent and eastern Ottawa counties south of Grand Rapids, Michigan. Initially opened to traffic on November 20, 2001, the roadway connects Interstate 196 on the west with Interstate 96 on the east while running through several townships on the south side of the Grand Rapids metropolitan area. Each end is in a rural area while the central section has suburban development along the highway. The freeway was originally conceived in the 1960s, and it took 32 years to approve, plan, finance, and build M-6 from the time that the state first authorized funding in 1972 to the time the full highway opened to traffic in 2004. Initial construction started in November 1997, with the first phase opened in 2001 and the remainder in November 2004. The project was built with two firsts: the first single-point urban interchange in the state, and a new technique to apply the pavement markings, embedding them into the concrete to reduce the chance of a snowplow scraping them off.

Read the rest of this article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-6_%28Michigan_highway%29

_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:

284:

Diocletian became Roman Emperor, eventually establishing reforms that brought an end to the Crisis of the Third Century. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diocletian

1695:

Zumbi, the last of the leaders of Quilombo dos Palmares in early Brazil, was executed. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zumbi

1902:

While discussing how to promote the newspaper L'Auto during a lunch meeting in Paris, sports journalist Henri Desgrange came up with the idea of holding a cycling race that later became known as the Tour de France. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tour_de_France

1917:

Second World War: The Battle of Cambrai in France began with British forces having initial success over Germany's Hindenburg Line. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Cambrai_%281917%29

1979:

A group of armed insurgents attacked and took over the Masjid al-Haram in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, declaring that one of their leaders, Muhammad bin abd Allah al-Qahtani, was the Mahdi, the prophesied redeemer of Islam. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Mosque_Seizure

_____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day:

Christmas creep (n): The inexorable tendency for the commercial aspects of Christmas to appear earlier every year http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Christmas_creep

___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day:

An extraordinary amount of arrogance is present in any claim of having been the first in "inventing" something. It's an arrogance that some enjoy, and others do not. Now I reach beyond arrogance when I proclaim that fractals had been pictured forever but their true role remained unrecognized and waited for me to be uncovered. --Benoît Mandelbrot http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Beno%C3%AEt_Mandelbrot