Barren Island is a former island on the southeast shore of Brooklyn in New York City. Located on Jamaica Bay, it was occupied by the Lenape Native Americans prior to the arrival of Dutch settlers in the 17th century. Its name is a corruption of Beeren Eylandt, the Dutch-language term for "Bears' Island". From the 1850s to the mid-1930s, the island was an industrial complex with plants for rendering fish and processing the carcasses of the city's dead horses, converting them into industrial products. Because of this, the body of water on the island's western shore was nicknamed "Dead Horse Bay". By the 1920s, most of the industrial activity had tapered off, and most residents were evicted in the late 1920s for the construction of an airport called Floyd Bennett Field. Since 1972, the former island's site has been part of the Gateway National Recreation Area, managed by the National Park Service.

Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barren_Island,_Brooklyn

_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:

1514:

Henry Grace à Dieu (depicted), the largest warship in the world at the time, was launched from Woolwich Dockyard, England. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Grace_%C3%A0_Dieu

1971:

The New York Times published the first excerpts from the Pentagon Papers, a 7,000-page classified Department of Defense history of the United States' political and military involvement in the Vietnam War. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentagon_Papers

1981:

English teenager Marcus Sarjeant fired six blanks at Queen Elizabeth II as she rode down The Mall to the Trooping the Colour ceremony. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcus_Sarjeant

_____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day:

nitrox: 1. (metallurgy) An industrial process for case hardening (imparting greater surface hardness to) metal objects, involving nitrocarburizing (the diffusion of carbon and nitrogen into the metal) followed by oxidation. 2. (underwater diving) A mixture of nitrogen and oxygen, the nitrogen content being lower than what is normally present in air, which is used in place of air as a breathing gas. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/nitrox

___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day:

Let's be simple and calm, Like the trees and streams, And God will love us, making us Us, even as the trees are trees And the streams are streams, And will give us greenness in the spring, which is its season, And a river to go to when we end... And he'll give us nothing more, since to give us more would make us less us.   --Fernando Pessoa https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Fernando_Pessoa