Saguaro National Park is a United States national park in southeastern
Arizona that preserves Sonoran Desert landscapes, fauna, and flora,
including the giant saguaro cactus. The 92,000-acre (37,000 ha) park
has two separate areas—the Tucson Mountain District (TMD) about 10
miles (16 km) west of the city of Tucson and the Rincon Mountain
District about 10 miles (16 km) east of the city. The Rincon Mountains
are part of the Madrean Sky Islands between the southern Rocky Mountains
and the Sierra Madre Oriental in Mexico; they are significantly higher
and wetter than the Tucson Mountains, and support many plants and
animals that do not live in the TMD. Earlier residents of and visitors
to the lands in and around the park before its creation included the
Hohokam, Sobaipuri, Tohono O'odham, and Apaches, as well as Spanish
explorers, missionaries, miners, homesteaders, and ranchers. In 1933,
President Herbert Hoover, using the Antiquities Act, established the
original park, Saguaro National Monument, in the Rincon Mountains. In
1961, President John F. Kennedy added the TMD.
Read more: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saguaro_National_Park>
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Today's selected anniversaries:
763:
The Abbasid Caliphate crushed the Alid revolt when one of the
rebel leaders was mortally wounded in battle near Basra in what is now
Iraq.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alid_revolt_of_762%E2%80%93763>
1789:
The Power of Sympathy by William Hill Brown, widely considered
to be the first American novel, was published.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Power_of_Sympathy>
1941:
Sparked by the murder of a German officer the previous day in
Bucharest, Romania, members of the Iron Guard engaged in a rebellion and
pogrom, killing 125 Jews.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legionnaires%27_rebellion_and_Bucharest_pogrom>
1968:
Vietnam War: The Vietnamese People's Army attacked Khe Sanh
Combat Base, a U.S. Marines outpost in Quảng Trị Province, South
Vietnam, starting the Battle of Khe Sanh (U.S. Army soldiers pictured).
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Khe_Sanh>
2011:
Demonstrations in Tirana to protest the alleged corruption of
the Albanian government led to the killings of three demonstrators by
the Republican Guard.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Albanian_opposition_demonstrations>
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Wiktionary's word of the day:
breadbasket:
1. A basket used for storing or carrying bread.
2. A region which has favourable conditions to produce a large quantity of
grain or, by extension, other food products; a food bowl.
3. (humorous) The abdomen or stomach, especially as a vulnerable part of
the body in an attack.
<https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/breadbasket>
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Wikiquote quote of the day:
Though "none by searching can find out God, or the Almighty to
perfection," yet I am persuaded, that if mankind would dare to exercise
their reason as freely on those divine topics as they do in the common
concerns of life, they would, in a great measure, rid themselves of
their blindness and superstition, gain more exalted ideas of God and
their obligations to him and one another, and be proportionally
delighted and blessed with the views of his moral government, make
better members of society, and acquire, manly powerful incentives to the
practice of morality, which is the last and greatest perfection that
human nature is capable of.
--Ethan Allen
<https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ethan_Allen>
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