Melville Island is a small peninsula in Nova Scotia, Canada, located in
the Northwest Arm of Halifax Harbour, west of Deadman's Island. It is
part of the Halifax Regional Municipality. The land is rocky, with thin,
acidic soil, but supports a limited woodland habitat. The site was
discovered by Europeans in the 1600s, though it was likely earlier
explored by aboriginals. It was initially used for storehouses before
being purchased by the British, who built a prisoner-of-war camp to hold
captives from the Napoleonic Wars and later the War of 1812. The burial
ground for the prisoners was on the adjacent Deadman's Island. Melville
Island was used as a receiving depot for slaves escaping the United
States, then as a quarantine hospital for immigrants arriving from
Europe (particularly Ireland). It briefly served as a recruitment centre
for the British Foreign Legion during the Crimean War and was then sold
to the British for use as a military prison. The land was granted to the
Canadian government in 1907, which used it to detain German and Austro-
Hungarian nationals during the First World War. During the Second World
War, prisoners were sent to McNabs Island instead, and ammunition depots
were kept on Melville Island. The peninsula now houses the clubhouse and
marina of the Armdale Yacht Club. Melville Island has been the subject
of a number of cultural works, most of which concern its use as a
prison.
Read more: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melville_Island_(Nova_Scotia)>
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Today's selected anniversaries:
1852:
The first Harvard–Yale Regatta—the first intercollegiate
sports event in the United States—was held on Lake Winnipesaukee, New
Hampshire.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvard%E2%80%93Yale_Regatta>
1916:
Irish nationalist Sir Roger Casement was hanged at London's
Pentonville Prison for treason for his role in the Easter Rising, a
rebellion to win Irish independence from Britain.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Casement>
1929:
Jiddu Krishnamurti, believed to likely be the messianic "World
Teacher", shocked the Theosophy movement by dissolving the Order of the
Star, the organisation established to support him.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_the_Star_in_the_East>
1936:
African American athlete Jesse Owens won the first of his four
gold medals at the Berlin Summer Olympics, dashing Nazi leaders' hopes
of Aryan domination.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Owens>
1948:
Before the House Un-American Activities Committee of the United
States House of Representatives, former spy turned government informer
Whittaker Chambers accused U.S. State Department official Alger Hiss of
being a communist and a Soviet spy.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alger_Hiss>
2005:
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the former Mayor of Tehran, began his term
as the sixth President of Iran.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahmoud_Ahmadinejad>
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Wiktionary's word of the day:
bowdlerize:
To remove those parts of a text considered offensive, vulgar, or
otherwise unseemly.
<https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/bowdlerize>
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Wikiquote quote of the day:
We came into a homeless frontier, a place where we were not welcome,
where nothing that lived was welcome, where thought and logic were
abhorrent and we were frightened, but we went into this place because
the universe lay before us, and if we were to know ourselves, we must
know the universe...
--Clifford D. Simak
<https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Clifford_D._Simak>
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