Mount Pinatubo is an active volcano located on the island of Luzon in the Philippines, at the intersection of the borders of the provinces of Zambales, Bataan, and Pampanga. Before 1991, the mountain was inconspicuous and heavily eroded. It was covered in dense forest which supported a population of several thousand indigenous people, the Aeta, who had fled to the mountains from the lowlands when the Spanish conquered the Philippines in 1565. The volcano's most recent eruption in June 1991 came after 500 years of dormancy, and produced one of the largest and most violent eruptions of the 20th century. Successful predictions of the onset of the climactic eruption led to the evacuation of tens of thousands of people from the surrounding areas, saving many lives, but the surrounding areas were severely damaged by pyroclastic flows, ash deposits, and later, lahars caused by rainwater remobilising earlier volcanic deposits, and thousands of houses were destroyed. The effects of the eruption were felt world-wide. It injected large amounts of aerosols into the stratosphere—more than any eruption since that of Krakatoa in 1883. Global temperatures dropped by about 0.5 °C (0.9 °F), and ozone destruction increased substantially.

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_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:

1420: Henry the Navigator became Grandmaster of the Order of Christ, the Portuguese successor to the Knights Templar. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_the_Navigator)

1521: Martin Luther was declared an outlaw and a heretic by the Diet of Worms. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther)

1810: May Revolution: Citizens of Buenos Aires ousted the Spanish viceroy and established the first independent local government in Argentina. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buenos_Aires)

1895: The Republic of Formosa was inaugurated in Taiwan, proclaiming independence from Qing China. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_Taiwan)

1961: Project Apollo, with the goal of "landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to Earth", was announced. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Apollo)

_____________________ Wikiquote of the day:

"If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore; and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God which had been shown! But every night come out these envoys of beauty, and light the universe with their admonishing smile." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson (http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ralph_Waldo_Emerson)