Banff National Park is Canada's first national park, established in 1885, in the Canadian Rockies. The park, located 120 kilometres west of Calgary in the province of Alberta, encompasses 6,641 square kilometres of mountainous terrain, with numerous glaciers and icefields, dense coniferous forest, and alpine landscapes. The Icefields Parkway extends from Lake Louise, connecting to Jasper National Park in the north. Provincial forests and Yoho National Park are neighbours to the west, while Kootenay National Park is located to the south, and Kananaskis Country to the southeast. The main commercial center of the park is the town of Banff, in the Bow River valley. Millions more pass through the park on the Trans-Canada Highway. As one of the world's most visited national parks, the health of Banff's ecosystem has been threatened. In the mid-1990s, Parks Canada responded by initiating a two-year study, which resulted in management recommendations, and new policies that aim to preserve ecological integrity.

Read the rest of this article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banff_National_Park

_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:

1066: Battle of Hastings: The Norman invasion forces of William the Conqueror defeated the English army and killed Harold Godwinson, the last crowned Anglo-Saxon king of England. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Hastings)

1773: The first recorded ministry of education, the Commission of National Education, was formed in Poland. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Komisja_Edukacji_Narodowej)

1947: Flying a Bell X-1, test pilot Chuck Yeager became the first person to break the sound barrier. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chuck_Yeager)

1953: Qibya massacre: Israeli military commander Ariel Sharon and his Unit 101 special forces were ordered to "inflict heavy damage on the inhabitants" of a village on the West Bank. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qibya_massacre)

1981: Hosni Mubarak was elected President of Egypt, one week after Anwar Sadat was assassinated. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hosni_Mubarak)

_____________________ Wikiquote of the day:

In all life one should comfort the afflicted, but verily, also, one should afflict the comfortable, and especially when they are comfortably, contentedly, even happily wrong. -- John Kenneth Galbraith (http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Kenneth_Galbraith)